Captivating movie about ex-CFL star
For the second time in 10 days Canadians will have a chance to watch a made- for- TV movie about a sports figure who suffered a brain trauma that wiped out his memory. The first was the story of Walter Gretzky, which chronicled the elder Gretzky’s comeback from an aneurysm that erased more than a decade of his life. On Tuesday, CTV will air the story of Terry Evanshen, the CFL great who lost all of his memories in a car crash.
Like the Gretzky movie, Evanshen’s is not really a sports story. It’s the story of a man who fought back from what appeared to be a hopeless situation. It’s also about how a family stayed together in the face of overwhelming challenges.
Like most made- for- TV movies, there’s a lot of crying. But it’s a captivating story, thanks in part to performances by Wendy Crewson ( Air Force One) and David James Elliott ( JAG). Crewson plays Evanshen’s wife Lorraine as a powerfully determined woman who refused to give up.
Elliott brings similar qualities to the lead role and even looks like he could run a post pattern without tripping over his own feet. There are problems, though. The Crewson character says Evanshen won the league’s MVP award twice, but in fact he was most outstanding Canadian. The movie shows people using flip- up cellphones and the Internet, for example, even though the events took place before they existed.
Executive producer Pierre Sarrazin said that was done to avoid making the movie ‘‘ a period piece.” Still, if you know anything about Evanshen, such inaccuracies are jarring.