MCFARLAND (Niki Caro). 129 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (February 20). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: Netflix
New Disney sports picture McFarland is based on a true story: in the late 80s, transplanted football coach Jim White convinced the Latino students at his struggling California high school to form a cross-country running team and compete at the state level.
They don’t make crowd-pleasing sports movies about underdogs who don’t amount to anything, so you can sort of figure out where it’s going. The real question is whether it plays the required beats in an interesting or entertaining way, or simply goes through the motions.
What can I say? Kevin Costner is really good at playing earnest authority figures, and he delivers as the well-meaning White. The director, New Zealand-born Niki Caro, shows the same eye for natural landscapes and sharp sense of community dynamics that she brought to Whale Rider and North Country. And White’s charges are defined reasonably well as individuals rather than stereotypes.
It could move a little faster and be a little less proud of its own progressiveness. (The scene where White explicitly contrasts the kids’ hardscrabble lives with his WASP “privilege” – in 1987 – feels like total fiction.) But McFarland is a sports movie that knows what it’s doing for the most part and ends strong.
