Film Review - The Boys In The Boat (2023)

The Boys In The Boat sets out its stall right from the start. Director George Clooney presents us with a soft centred opening sequence – nostalgic sepia, reassuring music from Alexandre Desplat, hazy sun shimmering on rippled water – so you have a sense of what’s to come. It begs a question, though. With a story set in Depression era America and a main character whose family abandoned him because times simply got too hard, just how misty eyed should we be?

Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) has managed to survive on his own, but funding his university studies with part time jobs is getting harder. Hearing the call has gone out for a new junior rowing squad – a place in the boat would also provide him with the much-needed money to pay for his tuition – he tries out for a spot, along with around 180 other students. He’s accepted, goes into rigorous training and the team soon becomes an unexpected success, beating every crew that comes up against them. They eventually find themselves representing their country at the Munich Olympics in 1936 and, as ever, they’re not expected to win ….

It doesn’t take long to understand exactly how nostalgic we should be about the Depression. Aside from a few scenes, and a quick sub-plot involving Rantz’s father, it’s pushed to the background and the post-race parties, complete with lavish buffets, nudge it even further into the sidelines. We know that, no matter how bad things get, it’ll all turn out fine in the end, hard work will triumph over adversity, the underdogs will have their day and just about every other all-American value will come to the fore. This is Clooney in much the same mode as his previous offering, The Tender Bar – benevolent, optimistic and wholesome through and through.

Yet, despite its failings, it’s hard not to warm to the film. The setting may be very underplayed, and a criminal waste is made of the inherent dramatic potential of hard-up students competing in a sport usually reserved for the wealthy, yet by the time the crew are competing in their two most important races, you’re cheering them on. This is where the film comes into its own, with some classy photography and Desplat’s soundtrack taking on a soaring quality that really enhances the action. And, like the race spectators, we’re so caught up in the action that we happily forgive that, with the exception of Rantz and the taciturn Hume (an eye-catching performance from Mare Of Easttown’s Jack Mulhern), most of the members of the crew simply blur into the background.

There’s a touch of Rocky about the whole thing, although this time shown through a softer focus lens, yet the film’s charm is so clean cut and beguiling that all you want is for the boys to win – and there’s no prizes for guessing the outcome. Easy on the eye, likeable and warm hearted, it’s not a movie that will win any trophies of its own, but it could turn out to be a sleeper hit with audiences.