The genre of sports biopics is a mixed bag. They range from the inspired and inspirational, like The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend, Remember the Titans and Moneyball (basketball, football, and baseball films, respectively) to the dark and disturbing, like Raging Bull and Foxcatcher (portraying boxing and wrestling, respectively). The new film Unstoppable is firmly in the former category.
When I was growing up, an 80s wrestling film like Vision Quest was the last thing you would find me watching – and not only because wrestling movies are relatively rarer sports films. While I had a certain appreciation for the discipline required for the sport, I simply did not see why anyone would willingly choose to don a singlet and roll around on a mat with another guy – or why watching two other men doing that would be interesting. The only wrestling I found entertaining as a youth was the fake soap opera variety where Stone Cold Steve Austin stunned The Rock and chugged beer.
It took being a father of three sons who wrestle for the scales to fall from my eyes. Unstoppable, which recently debuted on Amazon Prime, encapsulates many of the reasons why the sport deserves to be appreciated.
Based on his autobiography of the same name, Unstoppable portrays the story of Anthony Robles. Anthony’s mom, Judy, became pregnant with him in high school at sixteen, after which his dad disappeared. Raised in a devoutly Catholic home, she knew that she had fallen short of what God wanted of her. But she did not compound the mistake with further evil. She chose life. Her baby boy, Anthony, was born with only one leg.
Judy ended up marrying a man, Rick, who was cheating on his then-wife, portending future infidelity and marital strife. Yet, anchored in her faith, Judy remained an immovable rock in Anthony’s life. Anthony picked up wrestling in junior high and wasn’t very good. He stood on one leg and hopped around, making him an easy target for his opponent to take down. Eventually his high school coach (and substitute father figure when his stepdad wasn’t around) tutored him in a style that befitted him: wrestling from his one knee, low to the mat. Over the course of his high school career, Anthony and his coaches effectively forged a new style that the sport had never seen.
Our real-life hero is still an underrated underdog who, like the fictional boxing hero Rocky Balboa, will have to scrap his way to the top. The movie picks up the story at the high school nationals tournament in Philadelphia. Judy (played well by Jennifer Lopez) looks on as Anthony (in an excellent turn by Jharrel Jerome) wins a high school national title. With such success, Anthony dreams of attending the University of Iowa, a perennial wrestling powerhouse. But the Iowa coaches snub him. The only Division I wrestling program to offer him a scholarship is Drexel, a mediocre program at best. Anthony pensively visits the Rocky steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The message is clear: Our real-life hero is still an underrated underdog who, like the fictional boxing hero Rocky Balboa, will have to scrap his way to the top.
Anthony’s attachment to his Phoenix stomping grounds, and the felt need to work a part-time job to help out his mom as a stabilizing presence to an unstable home life, leads him to take the only other D1 offer he receives: to walk on at Arizona State. To earn his place on the team, he has to prove himself to his coaches and teammates, including during Hell Week in the Arizona heat. In one poignant scene, he arrives early to start a two-mile run up Squaw Peak, a rocky and steep technical trail that the most fit of the bipedal among us would find challenging. Anthony attacks it, crutch-running and stumbling his way toward the peak, even as his teammates surpass him. As he crests the peak, the rest of his team stares at him, mouths agape. The ASU coach (played by Don Cheadle) regards him and says, “Lord, have mercy.”
While Anthony’s deep Christian faith comes across explicitly in his autobiography, it is more backgrounded on screen, and the movie largely avoids the sports film pitfall of melodramatic sentimentality. Still, the film effectively portrays Anthony’s dignity and perseverance through the adversities of training and wrestling with one leg in a beautiful testament to what the human spirit, actuated by grace, is capable of. (In my experience, Christian faith is the norm rather than the exception in the sport. This seems to go all the way up to the collegiate level. In last year’s collegiate nationals, for example, most finalists being interviewed thanked God and expressed their Christian faith.)
In an age that is increasingly confused about what it means to be a man, the film also deals with masculinity in an effective way. Anthony’s mercurial and sometimes vicious stepdad scolds him for not taking the Drexel offer, and suggests he is not a real man for not striking out away from home. Judy retorts, “He’s not your kind of man.” The film thus highlights how, at its best – when placed under the architectonic Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love – wrestling instills the virtues of masculinity like strength, discipline, self-control, and resolve, which are used well when put into service and gift-love toward others. The intriguing suggestion is that surging participation numbers in youth wrestling could turn out to be a significant factor in addressing the crisis of masculinity in our culture.
The wrestler can learn the value of sublimating his male strength in service of virtuous ends. In a climactic confrontation between stepfather and stepson, Anthony intervenes to protect his mom from physical abuse. “You better get out of this real man’s face,” Rick threatens, pushing Anthony, forcing him to drop his crutches. “You haven’t been a man a day in your life,” Anthony replies. Rick retorts, “Oh, you’re the man of the house, huh? Cuz if I’m fighting a man, I ain’t gonna have no mercy.” It turns out the skillset wrestling imparts makes the bigger, bipedal threat no match for the one-legged youth. Abandoned by his biological father and betrayed by his stepfather, this Christian wrestler somehow recovers the ideal of chivalric masculinity that animated the Christian warriors of old: of controlled strength in service of those who need protection.
In his senior year, Anthony trains hard enough to deserve a Rocky-style montage, goes undefeated, and earns a shot at the national title. As fate would have it, he must face a reigning national champion – from the University of Iowa. And he must somehow again find the balance between aggression and patience, mirroring the challenge every man must face to balance the assertive and the passive virtues.
I submit that Anthony’s story teaches us that, by pushing himself to his physical and spiritual limits in the pursuit of excellence, the wrestler can learn the value of sublimating his male strength in service of virtuous ends. Disciplined self-restraint is key to success on the mat and in life – but this doesn’t mean lack of toughness and even sometimes animalistic aggression, within the rules. Christian readiness to always be merciful does not mean effeminacy.
This is a hard concept to grasp, let alone teach. My own way of trying to boil it down for my altar boys to understand, who wrestle on Saturdays and serve on Sundays, is this: Mercy is for the Mass, not for the mats.
About the Author: Dr. Kody W. Cooper
Dr. Kody W. Cooper is Associate Professor in the Institute of American Civics at the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Tennessee-Knoxville. This article is reprinted from www.wordonfire.org.