Film that we are reviewing today is called “12 mighty orphans”. This inspiring drama was available in theaters nationwide on June 18th 2021. What is really sweet is that the movie was actually released a week before that in Texas in honor of the football team of a fort worth orphanage who went on to play for the Texas state championships.
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It’s a true story and very inspiring. The movie itself is PG-13. It’s an hour and 58 minutes and we’ll give you our movie review grade at the very end.
Summary: 12 Mighty Orphans
The summary of the movie is haunted by his mysterious past. A devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championships during the great depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.
This old-fashioned sport drama is based on Jim Dent’s non-fiction book called ‘12 Mighty Orphans’. The inspiring true story of the mighty mites who ruled Texas football and all of these guys have gone down in Texas history. That’s the reason why it opened in Texas first before it was opening up everywhere else.
It’s the newest movie from director TY Roberts who previously brought us the movie ‘The Iron Orchard’. We don’t know if you saw that and who happens to be a Texas native. Even if you haven’t you can watch it here on Putlocker.
Cast
There are lots of other things we really liked about the 12 Mighty Orphans. First of all Luke Wilson, he looks and feels like he really belongs in the depression era. In other words, it doesn’t seem like a modern-day actor trying to fit into that time period.
He is very believable and to that point Martin Sheen’s role as doc hall fits him like a glove. Martin Sheen provides a lot of the comic humor in the movie and he creates an endearing character that lights up the screen every time he appears. We just loved his performance in this.
Wayne knight gave us such memorable naughty characters as Newman in the popular TV show. Seinfeld as well as the Rascal Dennis nerdy in Jurassic Park. Do you remember that even Farther Back played one of the detectives in that famous interrogation scene? In basic instinct that propelled Sharon Stone into a national sex symbol. You’ll get a kick out of his performance as well.
We really like the entire cast which also includes Robert Duvall treat Williams and all of the actors who play the dirty dozen orphans although the kids definitely look too old to be orphan kids at a school or at an orphanage itself still they all did a really good job.
We were surprised to see comedian Ron White playing a dramatic role where he did a great job. In the very beginning we get to see actual footage of the great depression setting the mood for this time period of this film very well.
Direction
The director also peppers various scenes with black and white footage to keep giving us the flavor of the depression era. You learn about some new techniques that were used in the history of football in the beginning of the sport and who doesn’t love an underdog sports movie. It’s somewhat cheesy yet it’s heartwarming and what’s wrong with cheesy.
It’s also extremely formulaic but this underdog sports formula has proven to be very effective in the history of filmmaking. It’s used over and over again simply because it works. There’s a lot of exposition from the narrator though we liked the folksy voice of the narrator.
We are not going to give you any spoiler on who that was or is and then keep watching during the final rolling credits to read the rest of the story. Also, the movie and the book are based on pictures of the real people.
There were a few things that could have been better but overall we really did like the movie a lot. In one scene at the beginning of the movie, the wife played by Vanessa Shaw is angry about moving to the orphanage to teach there with her husband and she says “it wasn’t her decision, he made the decision”.
She’s mad about it and then almost in the next scene she turns on a dime spouting inspirational messages without our being able to see her personal transformation and how she arrived at her newfound attitude.
We felt like missing a scene or something because her personality and attitude shifted so dramatically so sticklers to the facts might feel a little bit disgruntled about the real timeline.
President Franklin D Roosevelt is included in the film even though he wasn’t really in the actual timeline of these events as they occurred.
Some of the actors struggled with convincing southern accents and that Texas drawl. There are a lot of flashbacks that might confuse some of the viewers especially on the timeline and none of the football action is new or sequences.
We haven’t seen before its pretty standard but again it is early on in the sport so you don’t expect incredible action sequences and for some reason, there’s a lot of vomiting. Hard training sessions of football players have been represented very well in this movie.
Parental Advisory: 12 Mighty Orphans
Let us give you some tips for parents because overall it really is a family-friendly movie however there is a surprising amount of blood and violence and bullying both among the kids and the adults. There are a lot of hot-tempered aggressive males and so feminists will definitely protest.
The toxic masculinity that’s displayed in the film was a different time and that’s kind of how macho men were not to give an excuse but to help you understand the setting in the background. There are some crude comments mostly about women from these guys. There’s some light profanity but not very much.
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One of our favorite swears words are in the movie. Somebody says, “dang it” which is actually the closest we ever get to swearing. We think it’s just a cute word and it’s got those consonants that are so satisfying.
Movie Theme: 12 Mighty Orphans
Some of the themes that were illustrated really well in the film are courage and hope, persistence brotherhood, and family in all of its shapes and sizes, power and powerful symbols.
This team itself was a symbol for the nation of the United States of America, going through a very difficult time when the nation felt like it was an underdog trying to defeat the challenges of economics at the time. Other themes are believing in yourself and believing in something that might seem impossible, then overcoming your past and believing that you have a future.
We always write down funny lines and interesting lines so that you can kind of get a flavor for the film and we include all of them. There is a lot of humor and this time period there are lots of profanities exclaimed by people so Luke Wilson plays Rusty Russell.
This new high school coach and he has a lot of wisdom to share one of the things he says is “you’ve got to adapt to be competitive” and he tells that to his team and then he also says, “you can’t give up, you got to believe” and that’s short cutting.
A lot of his big wisdom to the team but we want you to enjoy all of those moments so don’t want to spoil too many of them.
Putlocker Grade
You want to know what score we are giving this my movie review is an “A”. It’s just a very sweet tenderhearted movie with some great lessons and a reminder to all of us who are still pulling out of this pandemic and struggling through some tough times so giving you movie recommendations.