The Boys in the Boat (2023)
This movie tells the story of the University of Washington eight-man rowing team that was sent to compete in the Berlin Olympics. Primarily it's the story of Joe Rantz his background and his struggle to make the team. He is an entirely watchable enjoyable movie that really does not do justice to the very good book that it's based on.
(A lot of spoilers below from the book. Read it your own peril.)
The director, George Clooney, misses the mark here by adding manufactured narratives and leaving out some of the pivotal themes of the book. A big part of the book is its telling of the impact of the great depression. In a relatively affluent time, that's hard for people to appreciate. Clooney hint at it in a few scenes but really doesn't touch it strongly enough. Another sub theme is Rantz's life story and how it impacted his ability to trust.
Rantz's early childhood is portrayed in the book is being pretty until his mother dies, kind of gruesomely. Eventually, his dad remarried a woman who is the archetype wicked stepmother. She never really likes her husband's children from the first marriage and joe in particular she forces her husband to kick him out of the house. Joe ends up being allowed to sleep in the school house and pays for it by cutting wood. He serves food in the dining tent of a logging camp in exchange for being fed. his family ends up moving to a different state cutting all ties with him .He takes a series of physical jobs and becomes pretty fit. That explains why he was able to compete and make the team.
Joe struggles to trust other people, understandable given the fact that his family abandoned him. That impacts his ability to get into sync with his teammates and causes him to get moved on and off the varsity boat.
Another sub story is the competition between the freshman boat and the varsity and junior varsity, and the next year the JV boat and the varsity boat. It is the JV boat that ends up going to Berlin.
Finally, they really underplay in the movie the degree to which the Germans tried to rig the contest. Moving the two fastest teams, the Americans and the English into the two slowest lanes that actually had a full headwind such that the American team had to actually turn its rudder and have the boat move up the course at an angle in order to be able to stay in its lane. That cost them tremendous and they were able to make a run other teams once they were out of the wind.
As I said at the start the movie perfectly good but the book is excellent and I'd highly recommend it.
