A scene from “The Boys in the Boat” 2023. IMDb photo

Here we are to welcome George Clooney’s directorial adventure into history, the little known sport of college rowing, and how America beat the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. That’s a lot to put on screen, and George did it.

MOVIE INFO

“THE BOYS IN THE BOAT”
Biography, Drama, Sport
A 1930s-set story centered on the University of Washington’s rowing team, from their Depression-era beginnings.
Director: George Clooney
Writers: Daniel James Brown, Mark L. Smith
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Callum Turner, Peter Guinness

Based on a best-selling book by Daniel James Brown, with a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, “The Boys in the Boat” give us boats aplenty as well as a lot of water, calming blue sky, pretty girls and displays of the super human art of endurance.

We get to watch boat loads of hungry, determined young men come to share a moment in sports history.

There are no stars in this epic. The boys sit in slender boats wondering how the hell they got there.

They have come, all of them, from the streets of the jobless depression as they set about competing for the chance of learning how to row, row, row their boats so well that they will be picked to be the team that whips the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

And we are there.

This is in the grip of the ’30’s Great Depression, mind you, when any available job that anyone like my brothers and their friends saw was snatched up.

Our principal hero here is Joe Rantz (Callum Turner, “Masters of the Air”), a gangly part-time college student down to his last nickel with a newspaper covering yet another hole in his shoe.

Turner is perfect in the part, cool and worn like a favorite shoe.

Had this film been made in the early ’40s, when stories like this were as common as soup lines, Joel McCrea would have played the part.

Somewhere earlier on in his school library, Joe meets cute, sweet and blonde Joyce Simdars (Hadley Robinson, “The Pale Blue Eye”), who, also in the ’40s, would have been played by Joan Blondell.

Robinson, blue eyes aglow, follows Clooney’s watery pastiche style as she and the America cling to their radios following the race from Berlin.

The rowers (Ryan Mann, Fraser Anthony, Ricky Bevins, Sam Bishop and Jonathan Sparrow, among others) clearly earned their wages. We know how many set-ups, retakes and days in the hot sun they must have endured.

The great and famous coach Al Ulbrickson, played by the great pro Joel Edgerton, stands out as he fights, loses, fights again and wins when he breaks the rules and picks the underrated team, knowing they had the perfect rhythm to win.

And certainly a hurrah must go to unknown actor Jack Mulhern as the shy, quiet team member who gets sick as the race is to begin, but rows anyhow. It’s a heart stopper. And he’s a terrific piano player.

Nothing in the film is more rewarding than just watching the faces and hands of the team in the actual rowing sequences. These poor guys with no backing, no chances, were caught on camera by Cinematographer Martin Ruhe and lovingly edited by Tanya M. Swerling.

I know audiences in movie houses must have stood up and cheered on that last pull.

The costuming elements by Production Designer Kalina Ivanov and Costume Designer Jenny Eagan, faithful to the era, are outstanding.

“Boys in the Boat” is old fashioned and lovable. Just love it.

“Boys in the Boat” is now streaming on MGM+ and Amazon Prime Video.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.