Following the Manassas Tigers, an American football team in Memphis, the documentary tells the story of their history of defeat that was turned around when their coach, Bill Courtney, arrived on the scene in 2004 to bring the team together, culminating in Lindsay and Martin’s documentary of their 2009 season.
We’ve now got a new clip to share with you from the film, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, entitled, ‘Together,’ giving us a sense of Courtney’s ambition to not just play well, but to create a better team, and (forgive the cliché) to turn his boys into men.
“Set in the inner-city of Memphis, Undefeated chronicles the Manassas Tigers’ 2009 football season, on and off-the-field, as they strive to win the first playoff game in the high school’s 110-year history. A perennial whipping boy, in recent decades Manassas had gone so far as to sell their home games to the highest bidder, but that all changed in the spring of 2004 when Bill Courtney, a former high school football coach turned lumber salesman, volunteered to lend a hand. When he arrived, the team consisted of 17 players, some timeworn equipment and a patch of grass masquerading as a practice field. Focusing more on winning young men than football games, the football program nevertheless began resurrecting itself, and in 2009, features the most talented team Manassas has ever fielded; a team that seems poised to end the playoff jinx that has plagued the school since time immemorial. A coming-of-age documentary film, Undefeated provides audiences an intimate view of an underprivileged group of teens and their inspirational coach, as they attempt to make history.”
The film opened with a limited release in the US at the weekend, and The Weinstein Company will no doubt be pushing ahead quickly with the narrative remake of the film in the months to come, so if Undefeated itself doesn’t get a release here in the UK in its documentary form, hopefully it will sometime in the future when it is turned into a feature narrative film.