Triumph-over-tragedy true story about the resurrection from literal ashes -- a 1970 plane crash -- of the Marshall University football team, the Thundering Herd, in the small West Virginia steel town of Huntington. A golden opportunity, obviously, for filmmaker McG (Charlie's Angels and its sequel) to expand his heart if not his name. For the purpose, he adopts a closeup-happy style that seeks to squeeze every drop of emotion from his actors, like grapes in a winepress. Admittedly, the spreading of the bad news and the immediate responses to it deliver a can't-miss punch. Once past that, however, the movie turns tragedy not so much into triumph as into triteness: the underdog formula. A somewhat goofy Matthew McConaughey plays the foolhardy volunteer coach, the only man in town -- an outsider, duly noted -- who sports the gaudy plaid pants and jackets of the period; and David Strathairn is the saturnine straight man, the beleaguered college president who persuades the NCAA to relax its strict rule (ancient history, now) against the use of freshmen in varsity athletics. On that score, it's a seeming oversight that no mention is made of the standing class of freshmen (Class of '74) who wouldn't have been travelling with the team and would be an eligible class of sophomores the following year. Another oversight, or blind spot, in the game action, is the blissful unawareness that a fumble in college football at that time (more ancient history) could not be advanced by the recovering player unless plucked out of midair before it hit the ground. With Matthew Fox, Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd