12 Mighty Orphans – ABC Film Challenge – Favourite – M – 12 Mighty Orphans – Movie Review
Director: Ty Roberts
Writer: Ty Roberts, Lane Garrison, Kevin Meyer (Screenplay)
Writer: Jim Dent (Book)
Cast
- Luke Wilson (Old School)
- Vinessa Shaw (Eyes Wide Shut)
- Wayne Knight (Jurassic Park)
- Martin Sheen (The Departed)
- Jake Austin Walker (No One Lives)
- Scott Haze (The Seeding)
Plot: Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high-school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.
Runtime: 1 Hour 58 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: 12 Mighty Orphans starts when American football coach Rusty Russell (Wilson) moves his family to an orphanage. Following the Great Depression, many children were left homeless and left in this orphanage. Rusty works with Doc (Sheen) to prepare a group of orphans to play American Football.
They face a challenge to start with, however, once they come together, they start turning heads. The team becomes an inspiration for a broken nation that gets behind them.
Verdict on 12 Mighty Orphans
12 Mighty Orphans is a sports drama telling the story of an American football coach that took a job at an orphanage during the Great Depression. This sees him turning 12 of the orphans into teen sports stars as they look to overcome the odds to win a state championship.
The movie uses the American football story to show the inspiration created by their achievements. It showed that people could come together to help people in need and show that sports can give children hope. This does follow a typical formula but it creates a divide between teachers who have the right ideas about helping and the strict ones that don’t. Luke Wilson is great in the leading role, with Martin Sheen getting a few laughs in the supporting assistant coach role.
Final Thoughts – 12 Mighty Orphans is an entertaining story about an inspirational sports team.
