Take your pity and shove it.
As fans of humorist John Callahan already know, it's dangerous to view quadriplegics through the sentimental lens of "brave, inspiring cripple." Callahan would probably run over your foot; and the men of
Murderball
are not much different. ***image1***Having gone through arduous physical therapy in order to be even nominally physically independent, these 12 men have now taken on another challenge: to be the best in the world at quad rugby-or as the game was known at its inception, murderball.
"It's kind of hard to get corporate sponsorship with a name like that," one player admits, but murderball may be the most apt description of the game. Except for the grunting and cursing, it's not too much like rugby; for one thing it all happens a hell of a lot faster, as team members rocket back and forth on a basketball court, the ball in play rendered slightly more manageable thanks to sticky glue poured over players' gloves. Their specially designed chairs gleam like gladiatorial chariots, proudly dented and with extra-low centers of gravity (though with quad rugby's version of the tackle, resembling an especially malicious round of bumper cars, there are still plenty of wince-inducing wrecks and spills).
As with any outstanding sports documentary (e.g.,
When We Were Kings
), rivalry creates much of the tension here; of charismatic, unsentimental US player Mark Zupan, friends say candidly, ***image2***"He was very much an asshole even before he was in the wheelchair." Then there's his archenemy, Joe Soares, the kind of man for whom documentaries were invented. A tough-talking cross between Terry Bradshaw and Robert Duvall, the American Soares enrages US players by coaching the Canadian team, sparking off a series of international grudge matches which eventually culminate in the 2004 Paralympics in Athens, Greece.
As you'd expect from an MTV-sponsored film,
Murderball's
direction is fast-paced and edgy, mirroring the players' take-no-prisoners competitive drive. Rubin and Shapiro shoot from dizzyingly low angles, often with a camera fastened to the wheelchair's undercarriage, giving viewers a visceral taste of life closer to the ground. These raw, hard-hitting visuals pair satisfyingly with the players' unvarnished dialogue; add the interleaving of each man's wrenching personal story (childhood polio, meningitis, a fall off a balcony, being thrown from the back of a drunk friend's pickup) and an unabashedly grisly soundtrack (Ministry, Ween, The Moldy Peaches), and you've got a scathingly bad-ass documentary.
Frankly, these guys are so rock 'n' roll they make able-bodied folk look weak. They party hard, get all the chicks and answer with blunt amusement the question on the tip of everyone's tongue: yes, they can have sex, and quite successfully, if their babelicious girlfriends are any indication. But the most moving scenes of the film are perhaps those in which the tattooed and goateed Zupan recruits among the recently spinal-injured; we see possibility transform the sunken faces of formerly athletic young men who've been forcibly bedridden, hope igniting in their eyes as they tentatively try out the gladiator wheelchair and start grinning. Don't waste time mourning this week's absence of Armstrong and Ullrich-there's a far more grueling gear-sport out there, and a group of men willing to go the distance to demonstrate they don't need anyone's pity.
