Film Review: The Boys in the Boat hits most of the beats we expect from a sports movie

Directed by George Clooney, The Boys in the Boat is based on a true story 

The Boys in the Boat (2023) (Warner). Picture: IMBD

• The Boys in the Boat
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Set in Seattle during the Depression, and based on a true story, The Boys in the Boat (PG) stars Callum Turner as Joe Rantz, an engineering student at Washington State who is living rough and who tries out for the college rowing team only because it promises a part-time job.

A loner who was abandoned to fend for himself at a young age, Joe gradually comes to trust his team-mates as they take on the wealth and privilege of the Ivy League universities, even as veteran coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) sets his sights on winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The Boys in the Boat is adapted from Daniel James Brown’s book by Mark L. Smith. Picture: IMBD

Adapted from Daniel James Brown’s book by Mark L. Smith, and directed by George Clooney, The Boys in the Boat hits most of the beats we expect from a sports movie about the plucky underdog, although here the emphasis is on underdogs plural.

Joe, who has never rowed before, quickly discovers that a rowing team is a society in microcosm: when all eight people are pulling in synch, “rowing is more poetry than sport”. That metaphor is trowelled on a little too thickly at times, but otherwise it is a stylish, feel-good tale of triumph against the odds.