The Boys in the Boat
MGM
George Clooney clearly likes to direct, but he needs to stop choosing the most milquetoast screenplays imaginable. Case in point: his latest effort, The Boys in the Boat, re-treads so many clichés that [many] sports movies in the early 2000s perpetuated. Perhaps if the film had been released from 2001 to 2005, the prime window for many of the best modern sports films – including Seabiscuit, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Miracle, Cinderella Man, and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan – it likely would’ve won many awards.
But now that it’s out during the Christmas Corridor of 2023, the film is clearly past its due date, with a structure and aesthetic that filmmakers don’t utilize anymore, mainly because it’s been done to death so much that the end result now is boring. Credit where credit is due: Clooney and cinematographer Martin Ruhe attempt to give the film adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s book of the same name a vérité style, with many crash zooms acting as reaction shots for the audience watching the U.S. Olympic team and the titular boys in the boat rowing like their life depends on it.
There’s also a laughably hilarious Saving Private Ryan framing device when Callum Turner’s face as Joe Rantz gets superimposed by an older version of the character, who was shown at the beginning observing his grandson rowing, exactly like Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn went back in time to reveal who that old person was shown at the beginning of the film. This technique would’ve been effective if Spielberg had never done it. Through Clooney’s lens, it just feels cheap.
The film chronicles the path of Turner’s Rantz, who joins the University of Washington rowing crew in an attempt to pay his school tuition. However, a simple endeavor leads to a big dream once Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) realizes his potential as a rower, where he can lead his team to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. There were massive sociopolitical tensions at the games. Still, Clooney isn’t interested in showing those, or at least explaining to audiences why these games were one of the most important in U.S. history, save for a cheekily-constructed conversation with Jesse Owens and the looming presence of Adolf Hitler watching the Men’s Eight final.
The Boys in the Boat is always on the cusp of doing more than its mediocre screenplay by Mark L. Smith, as if Clooney wants to overcome clichés and draw a compelling character study of eight men who must overcome all odds to win gold, not just for themselves, but to make a statement against German forces. Clooney takes the time to highlight that the U.S. team, at the Opening Ceremony, did not salute Hitler, with a character stating, “Guess they’re making friends already.”
There is tension between the Americans and the Germans. Yet, Clooney never explores it as an important plot point, even though he consistently recalls events that exacerbated an already edgy relationship between the two countries. There’s a desire to push Smith’s screenplay further, but not a strong one, ultimately resulting in a too-predictable, mawkish affair that is far too long and dull for its own good.
There isn’t a single element of surprise, or at least dramatic tension, that would make this film interesting: it’s all incredibly stereotypical and glossy, from the tepid relationship between Rantz and Joyce Simdars (Hadley Robinson has never been this lethargic) to the rowing sequences that, while effectively scored by the master Alexandre Desplat, never have the dramatic impact Clooney thinks they have.
The thing about sports movies is that they need to have some form of excitement, some dramatic arc where audiences that aren’t aware of the story won’t know if they will make it or win the gold medal. There should always be a “will they/won’t they” moment, as conventional as it is, because it puts everyone on the edge of their seat if the filmmaker consistently teases their fate in the game. Clooney barely attempts to do this through the figure of the shy Don Hume (Jack Mulhern), who develops an illness close to the game.
The illness moments are symptomatic (pun intended) of everything wrong with the film: Don begins to feel tired and unwell until he decides to row in the qualifiers, worsening his health. Ulbrickson tells the team he’s caught a bug and that the team’s victory hinges on his recovery. This is a pretty important setback for the te—oh, he recovered in the next scene? Everything’s fine? Well…
Clooney presents elements that could be perceived as setbacks yet never paints them as such, making the overall story of the U.S. team’s victory too simple and lacking in massive dramatic impact. He even attempts to deliver a complex relationship between Rantz and his absentee father (Alec Newman). Still, since he isn’t in the film for too long, it feels unimportant for the progression of Rantz’s arc within the picture.
Thankfully, Turner is a skillful enough actor who infuses enough charm in his portrayal of Rantz that his progression in the film is never boring, no matter how clichéd the dialogues may be. He possesses the same spirit as Chris Evans in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, with Peter Guinness and Joel Edgerton giving impassioned supporting performances as Rantz’s mentors.
Without their skills, the film is a complete wash. They barely save The Boys in the Boat from being the worst movie of George Clooney’s career. Though he should be relieved that it’s at least more watchable and visually interesting than The Monuments Men, but nowhere near his audacious Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and The Ides of March.