‘The Boys in the Boat’ Review: Joel Edgerton in George Clooney’s Tribute to Old-Fashioned Can-Do Spirit
Callum Turner also stars in the true story of a junior varsity rowing crew’s ascent to the 1936 Olympic Games.
‘The Boys in the Boat’
Courtesy of Laurie Sparham/ Amazon MGM Studios filmThe scrappy ragtag team, the gruff but kind coach, the against-the-odds triumph — sports dramas rarely veer far from a basic template. It’s no surprise when the story’s athletes accomplish their unlikely goal; it’s how the director leads us there that matters. In the case of The Boys in the Boat, a telling of true events that can feel overly cautious in its admiring distance, the surprises lie in small moments and grace notes.
At the helm for his ninth feature, George Clooney follows the intimate coming-of-age tale The Tender Bar with a return to the realm of history. He puts a subdued spin on the story of unlikely Olympians — and generally avoids the stodginess of The Monuments Men. The University of Washington Huskies were working-class college kids in the depths of the Great Depression who became contenders in the rarefied realm of competitive rowing, going all the way to the Olympics — and not just any Olympics, but the 1936 Games in Nazi Berlin.
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The Boys in the Boat
There’s a no-fuss efficiency to the screenplay, adapted from Daniel James Brown’s book of the same name by Mark L. Smith, whose credits include The Revenant and Clooney’s sci-fi excursion The Midnight Sky. Still, The Boys in the Boat takes a while to spark to life. It’s a handsome period piece that’s often too smooth around the edges, but with its old-fashioned sincerity and unforced insistence on team spirit, it has a certain all-ages appeal — assuming audiences of all ages are going to the movies this holiday season.
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At the heart of Smith and Clooney’s version of the story (the Huskies were also the subject of a 2016 PBS documentary) are two men: brooding hero Joe Rantz (Callum Turner, of the Fantastic Beasts features), an engineering student who becomes a member of the school’s junior rowing crew, and head coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), a straight arrow and a man of as few words as Joe. These two are played with supreme subtlety — Edgerton has a particular knack for small gestures — and are intriguing in their self-contained ways. But they’re both recessive characters, which lends their dynamics a tamped-down quality that defines much of the movie.
In a certain way, the muted dramatic tone suits the circumstances: This is the depths of the Great Depression, and the have-nots are in dire straits. No less than the teamwork and chemistry of an eight-man rowing crew, the subject of the film is the class divide. The underdogs are also the underclass, eventually facing Ivy League schools in their Olympics-qualifying meets, and ultimately the elite athletes of Hitler’s Germany. The Huskies’ chief rival on home turf is Cal Berkeley, also a public school but a prestigious and far better financed one. In his double-breasted suits and self-satisfied smirk, Cal’s coach, Ky Ebright (Glenn Wrage), bears all the earmarks of a standard villain. And yet, reflecting the drama’s refreshing belief in decency, he figures prominently in one of its most moving moments, and one that’s all the more potent for being played so quietly.
Turner, in his first big-screen lead role, brings an arresting low-key charisma to Joe, who’s hardly alone in his financial struggles but still keeps them to himself. On his own since he was 14, Joe is no stranger to soup kitchens. His shoes need new soles. With a tuition bill hanging over his head and jobs in short supply, he jumps at the chance to join the school’s rowing crew because it offers a salary and lodging. Chosen from among the hundreds who try out, he finds a new confidence in the rowing shell, drawn out of his own shell by team camaraderie, the coach’s belief in him, and the exhortations of cocky coxswain Bobby Moch (Luke Slattery) at the helm. The attentions of Joyce, a girl he knew in grade school, are also key. Hadley Robinson (Winning Time) brings low-voltage jolts of bold yet shy flirtation to her role, and the mutual smitten-ness is persuasive.
For his part, Al has the crucial support of a loving wife, Hazel (Courtney Henggeler), and a devoted assistant coach, Tom Bolles (James Wolk, of Mad Men). Seeing something not just promising but potentially spectacular in his new JV squad, Al makes the shocking decision to send them, rather than the experienced senior crew, to the Olympics-qualifying Poughkeepsie Regatta — a showdown that pits “old money versus no money at all,” as radio journalist Royal Brougham (Chris Diamantopoulos) proclaims to a rapt audience.
Peter Guinness adds a touch of genteel wisdom as George Pocock, the crew’s British boatbuilder and, it turns out, a sensitive Joe whisperer when the young athlete withdraws into shame or uncertainty. George is something of a poet, which is only fitting. As another character declares, “Rowing is more poetry than sport,” a sensibility that Alexandre Desplat’s gentle, versatile score is fully in tune with. (There are also lively musical touches courtesy of Joe’s piano-playing teammate Don Hume, portrayed by Jack Mulhern.) As to the visual poetry of rowing — the mechanics and the muscle, the glide through picturesque waters — DP Martin Ruhe and editor Tanya Swerling avoid the obvious, and Ruhe’s swooping camerawork is impressive without being showy. As with the crew in the boat, Clooney and his collaborators achieve something fluent when everyone’s in sync.
Favoring a subdued palette of browns and gray-blues, designers Kalina Ivanov and designer Jenny Eagan match the understated mood of a story set in a pre-plastics era of trains and ships and natural fabrics.
That understated quality carries through to the movie’s wider historical aspects. Clooney doesn’t overdo the significance of what the Huskies find in Berlin, letting the regalia and chants of “Deutschland!” speak for themselves, with a rather mild-looking Hitler (Daniel Philpott) seen but not heard. It’s the Huskies’ brief encounter with Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes), that’s most piercing in the Olympics section of the film.
About halfway through the movie, Edgerton’s Coach Ulbrickson is strategizing out loud, and says, “We need an edge.” At times The Boys in the Boat could have used more of an edge. But like the Huskies, it gets the job done, stumbling sometimes but mostly assured. It hasn’t the fire, say, of another Olympics-triumph movie, Miracle, but it’s a saga from another era. The characters’ gumption lies not in big movie gestures but in steadiness during desperately uncertain times, one oar stroke after another.