‘AMERICAN UNDERDOG’ STAYS GROUNDED
If a sports movie can be said to have a game plan, the Kurt Warner biopic “American Underdog” plays it safe, employing a strategy that’s more dink-and-dunk than go-bigor-go-home. Co-directed by siblings and faith-based filmmakers Andrew and John Erwin, this down-the-middle crowd-pleaser ultimately makes for a rousing enough portrayal of against-theodds fortitude, pad-crunching gridiron action and good oldfashioned Midwestern decency.
Warner’s Cinderella story is a familiar one: Undrafted after graduating from a second-tier college football program, the quarterback made ends meet stocking shelves in Iowa and slinging Arena Football League touchdowns before finally breaking into the NFL as a 26-year-old newcomer with the St. Louis Rams. Warner went on to take over for injured starter Trent Green for the 1999 season and conducted a prolific Rams offense billed as “the Greatest Show on Turf,” earning NFL MVP honors and Super Bowl glory.
“American Underdog” opens with a superfluous prologue — a young Kurt (Beau Hart) watches Super Bowl XIX, absorbing sportsas-life-lessons platitudes — before catching up with the signal caller during his redshirt senior season at the University of Northern Iowa. As the adult Kurt, “Shazam!” star Zachary Levi carries himself with casual confidence, effortless empathy and a superhero-chiseled physique that leave no question about whether he looks the part.
Well, maybe one: Levi, 41, plays Kurt from age 22 to 28, in a curious bit of casting. It doesn’t derail the movie, but it certainly distracts from it. That said, Levi seems at home under center in the football sequences, which fuse the actor’s athleticism with stellar stunt work and hard-hitting sound design to achieve a visceral effect. When it comes to the obligatory training montages, cinematographer Kristopher Kimlin makes the most of golden-hour light. (Texas and Oklahoma stand in for Iowa.)
The script, adapted by Jon Erwin, David Aaron Cohen and Jon Gunn from the book “All Things Possible” by Warner and Michael Silver, shrewdly splits the focus between the future Hall of Famer and his eventual wife, Brenda (Anna Paquin). A single mother of two, with a legally blind son (a heartstring-tugging Hayden Zaller), Brenda is burdened with a complicated past and a challenging present. Although the cutesy courtship between Kurt and Brenda borders on Hallmark-y, the reality of their respective struggles swiftly grounds the romance in something deeper.
While most viewers will guess how the sports side of the story ends, the traumatic, less-publicized turns of Brenda’s life make the rags-to-riches narrative all the more uplifting. Executive-produced by Kurt and Brenda Warner, “American Underdog” leans into the family’s Christian faith, with moments that teeter toward cliché without hijacking the larger drama.
Once Kurt arrives in the NFL, “American Underdog” fast-forwards through that historic 1999 season. It’s not the only stretch when the compressed timeline throws off the film’s pacing: Earlier, Kurt embarks on many months’ worth of momentous life events during what seems to be a single week between the AFL’s semifinal and title game. But some trimming of the protagonist’s life story — such as his European playing career and first NFL season as the Rams’ sparingly used third-stringer — is smart.
There are still plenty of Easter eggs for football obsessives. When Kurt heads to Packers camp as an undrafted free agent, it’s none other than Steve Mariucci (Brett Varvel), the future San Francisco 49ers coach — then the quarterbacks coach for Green Bay — who ruthlessly cuts the prospect loose. And Baltimore Ravens Hall of Famer Ray Lewis is uncannily impersonated by former NFL linebacker Nic Harris.
Unfortunately, Dennis Quaid’s scenery-chewing turn as beloved Rams Coach Dick Vermeil amounts to little more than an extended cameo. As Mike Martz, St. Louis’s initially incredulous offensive coordinator, Chance Kelly is given a little more with which to work.
If those names mean nothing to you, don’t sweat it. Even the football illiterate can appreciate “Underdog,” which nimbly avoids inaccessibility and over-explaining, only occasionally losing sight of the intimate, feel-good story at its heart. This underdog may have been an all-time great in the air, but the movie defies expectation by, of all things, staying grounded.