The Boys in the Boat

By Joanna Langfield

After a deliberately slow start, George Clooney pushes this one across the finish line.

This period sports drama is based on a best selling novel about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team. Why make a movie about this crew? No spoilers, but this group of rag tag students, some of whom only competed because, during the Great Depression, they needed the money, wound up going for Gold at the fabled Summer Olympics in Berlin. I’ll leave it to you to imagine if they won or not.

Clooney is a director who seems to be drawn to period pieces. His staging of them is evocative and seemingly appropriate. But what tickles him doesn’t always translate into universal interest. While Good Night, and Good Luck drew acclaim, his other so called “buddy” films, The Monuments Men and Leatherheads, for the most part, did not. And yet, he persisted, making this story, a look at another real life group of men finding the strength to do heroic things.

And it’s not that this one is bad, it’s not. But it clearly doesn’t worry if an audience will get on board. Clooney takes his time, I thought to the film’s detriment, getting things going. But, once the boys get in the boat, and the races begin, even the most unengaged viewer will find their pulses racing along with them.

I’ve always enjoyed watching Joel Edgerton and he is fine in support here, but the story centers around one of the oarsmen, a guy named Joe. The British actor Callum Turner acquits himself well, reminding me at times of a young Richard Gere.

While this film takes great pains not to rock any boats, it does offer up some complacently smooth sailing. Which, for some, might be just okay.