Ah yes, the sports film. What a wonderful genre. We've all seen our share of sports movies, featuring sports both popular and obscure. What makes the genre so great is that the sport itself will lend to some natural and exciting dramatics, and all the storyteller has to do is populate that natural story with compelling characters going through their own interesting personal stories. This is what makes Hamill a very strong and well done movie, the compelling central character with interesting conflicts on top of all the sporting dramatism.
Hamill is about Matt "The Hammer" Hamill (Russell Harvard, There Will be Blood), real life professional MMA fighter and collegiate wrestling champion. So grappling is the sport in question (mostly the collegiate wrestling), and The Hammer is the compelling character. Hamill was not only born deaf, but also raised in a small town in which he was the only deaf person. So instead of learning sign language, his grandfather Stan (Raymond J. Barry, Falling Down, Cool Runnings) helps him learn how to use his voice and how to speak English, so by the time he gets to high school he can read lips and communicate with people pretty well. And along the way, he discovered that he had a natural capacity for kicking ass, which he segues into high school and collegiate wrestling, and this becomes a pretty good outlet for him. And pugilism has proven to be great cinematic fodder, as characters literally work out their problems with their fists as well as their brains, and wrestling does have an emphasis on strategy over strength and a solid game plan over the flat out win.
However, the wrestling stuff isn't the most interesting aspect of the movie. I mean, it's all very well done, and even though most of the basic plot points are telegraphed and predictable, this can be easily forgiven because it's all based on true events (and besides, how can an inspirational sports movie hope to inspire people with a character that doesn't ultimately triumph in some way?). Much like the recent The Fighter, it could easily be seen as a knock off of the Rocky type of underdog story if it wasn't also based on true events and real people. Instead, the most interesting aspect of the movie is Hamill's search for a place where everything makes sense to him and he can just live his life and not have to worry about how his lack of hearing can make things difficult for him. Growing up in that small town as the only deaf person, he was instantly an outsider, as he had no one that he could relate to. In a way, it didn't help that his grandfather insisted that he should be treated like everyone else, refusing to let the kid or his mother learn sign language, and getting in his face about feeling sorry for himself for being different. And then when Hamill finally finds himself in a community of deaf people at college, he has to work to fit in there too because he doesn't know any of the deaf community etiquette - he uses his voice while everyone else signs, and he constantly has to be reminded to do things differently than he's used to because that's how things are. The only place where Hamill feels at peace and one with his surroundings is when he's on the mat wrestling, and Hamill works because of the way these personal struggles feed into his sports goals.
Being a movie about a deaf person, the sound design obviously plays a big role in the storytelling - there are often times when we are presented with what Hamill could have been sensing at those moments, whether he's wrestling, or on a date, or lying in a stream in his prom tux, and helps us understand what he could be going through and what it would be like to be in his position. The entire movie is also subtitled, obviously closed-captioned for the hearing impaired, which only makes sense for a film like this, but they also use the subtitles to show how Hamill struggled to communicate with people. If he could read their lips, then he would be fine, and the subtitles would be fine; but if he couldn't see the person's lips moving, then he could read them, hence he didn't know what they were saying, which was shown as a series of dashes in place of the words he missed. Obviously a lot of thought went in to how to portray this character and this movie, and it definitely pays off as an overall experience.
Click here for the full schedule of movies at the 20th annual Florida Film Festival.
Click here for more articles from Christopher Crespo, the Orlando Movie Examiner.
Hear Christopher Crespo call in to SBK Live! every Monday night at 8:30 PM for a review of the prior weekend's box office and films.
Christopher Crespo also contributes to Dirty Rotten Sports.
Email Christopher Crespo at crespo11882@yahoo.com.
Dig www.twitter.com/MovieExaminer and www.facebook.com/OrlandoMovieExaminer
Comments