Murderball

There's a new movie out that documents quadriplegics involved in the sport of 'murderball' or 'quad rugby'. This is a movie I want to see.

The Leonard Lopate show had people from the film on today. You can hear that segment by clicking here.

The New York Times reviewed the movie today. That review follows.

July 8, 2005

These Gladiators on Wheels Are Not Playing for a Hug

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Who wins and who loses in the gripping sports documentary "Murderball" may not be a matter of life and death. But the ferocity of competition displayed in the film's full-body immersion in wheelchair rugby trumps any high-powered gamesmanship you'll find on reality television. Invented in Canada in the 1970's, the sport used to be known as murderball, until the name proved an insurmountable barrier to securing corporate sponsorship.

But in another way, wheelchair rugby, or quad rugby, as it's also called, really is a life-and-death matter. A synthesis of basketball, hockey and rugby, it is played by quadriplegic men, many disabled by catastrophic accidents during the prime of life. As the movie shows, the sport has restored meaning and hope to its players, who require two to three years of grueling rehabilitation and training to master it.

The film's charismatic real-life star, Mark Zupan, is a tattooed sitting gladiator with reddish hair, a goatee and a smoldering glare. Mr. Zupan was 18 when he went out drinking one night in 1993 with his best friend, Chris Igoe, and ended the evening passed out in the back of his friend's pickup truck. Mr. Igoe returned hours later, and unaware that Mr. Zupan was asleep in the back, accidentally crashed the truck on the way home.

Landing in a canal with a broken neck, unable to move his legs, Mr. Zupan was rescued after clinging to a branch for more than 13 hours. In 1996 he began playing wheelchair rugby and has since become the leader of the American Paralympic team. His ruptured friendship with Mr. Igoe is on the mend.

The combatants in wheelchair rugby, outfitted like warriors but without helmets, are strapped into armored, custom-made wheelchairs that collide in a kind of human demolition derby as the teams compete to carry a ball into the end zone.

"We're not going for a hug, we're going for a gold medal," one player declares irritably, recalling a naïve comparison of the Paralympics to the Special Olympics, the international games for children and adults with learning disabilities.

The documentary corrects the common misperception that all quadriplegics are totally immobilized. In the film's definition, quadriplegia means some impairment of all four limbs. The majority of players broke their necks; their degree of immobility depends on what part of the neck was fractured. With extensive rehabilitation, many are able to lead independent lives. The movie goes out of its way to address the question of sex, which is practiced enthusiastically by those athletes who discuss it.

Wheelchair rugby players are assigned rankings, from .5 to 3.5, depending on their degree of upper-body mobility. A team's total score cannot exceed 8. The more mobile players handle the ball; the rest play defense.

The movie spans more than two years, beginning with the 2002 World Wheelchair Rugby Championships in Sweden and ending after the 2004 International Paralympic Games in Athens. Based on a magazine article by Dana Adam Shapiro, who directed the movie with Henry-Alex Rubin, "Murderball" is almost as tough as the relentlessly combative players it profiles.

The film consciously steers away from the tears and gooey inspirational uplift associated with disability movies. Fast-paced and fluid, it also resists squandering time on dry sports statistics or medical analysis. The game sequences, many shot at wheelchair eye level, are as viscerally thrilling as they are concise. There is little attempt to build up or tease out suspense during a championship game; that kind of melodrama is out.

The heart of the movie is in the human dramas of Mr. Zupan and Joe Soares, the bullying, fanatically competitive coach of the Canadian team. We also meet Keith Cavill, an athlete who suffered a broken neck in 2003 in a Motocross race (a rough-course motorcycle competition), who discovers and embraces wheelchair rugby. The scenes of his daunting rehabilitative therapy and of his bitter return home from the hospital suggest the almost unimaginable distance he must travel to transcend despair and immobility to play the sport.

But the prize for the most competitive aggressor goes to Mr. Soares. Disabled by a childhood case of polio, he was once the leader of the American team. After being cut from the roster, he accepted the position of coach for the Canadian team, for which he is denounced as a Benedict Arnold by his former teammates. Mr. Soares is so obsessed with winning that he barely has time for his nonathletic adolescent son, who, despite excelling academically and playing the viola, is clearly a disappointment to his father. But in the middle of the movie, Mr. Soares suffers a serious heart attack. After his recovery, he emerges as a kinder, gentler dad.

As the Canadian and American teams go at each other, "Murderball" flirts with sentimentality and rah-rah button-pushing but never succumbs. The evenness of its emotional pitch almost incidentally helps the film become an unusually deep exploration of sports, machismo and the competitive spirit.

Where would these men be without the activity that has transformed their lives? Instead of warring with one another, they might be at war with themselves, locked in a cycle of resentment, despair and self-loathing.

The movie is in perfect sync with the survival-of-the-fittest values of the times. In a chilly era where go-for-broke competition and worship of the body rule entertainment, the sickness of the soul is only for losers, and no one wants to lose.

"Murderball" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has abundant profanity and frank sex talk.

Murderball

Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro; based on an article in Maxim by Mr. Shapiro; director of photography, Mr. Rubin; edited by Geoffrey Richman and Conor O'Neill; music by Jamie Saft; produced by Jeffrey Mandel and Mr. Shapiro; released by ThinkFilm and MTV Films. Running time: 86 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Mark Zupan, Joe Soares, Keith Cavill, Andy Cohn, Scott Hogsett and Bob Lujano.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company