There are winks throughout the Matt Damon/Ben Affleck-produced wrestling drama Unstoppable suggesting that those involved are keenly aware of the archetypes that have come to define and often plague the sports movie genre. The lead character has a Rocky poster in his room and we see him twice walk to the top of the historic steps from the series to feel inspired. A high school coach pokes fun at stirring speech cliches at a key teaching moment. A college coach is ridiculed for his overuse of mythical fables as motivation. But more often the film, premiering at the audience-friendly Toronto film festival, is content to be just as bland and boilerplate as the many, many against-all-odds crowd-pleasers that have come before it.
The true story of over-achieving wrestler Anthony Robles, born with one leg to a struggling young mother, is fitted with the easy beats we naturally expect but can only transcend when the film allows its specifics to shine through. Films about wrestling are thin on the ground, something Unstoppable often directly explains, especially during the wrestles which are mildly involving at best, but the details and difficulties of a less explored world also give it a distinction it sorely needs. Robles is fearfully aware of the limits that his passion insists upon him, regardless of his physical condition, a sport that doesn’t provide one with many, if any, options post-college. It adds an urgency to his dream, if not now then never, and a sad awareness that even if he does succeed, his life after that point will probably be lived working a job he’s never wanted with anywhere near the same intensity.
