Ray Pride

Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro's powerful, visceral, emotional, profane, heartening crowd-pleaser follows four rugby players from the U.S. Paralympics team: they joust in custom-designed wheelchairs that would do Mad Max proud. (Call it "Million Dollar Motherfuckers.") Quad rugby is full-contact, and the subjects of the doc are full-blooded and full-throated guys' guys. Tracing the rivalry between American and Canadian teams, Rubin and Shapiro have conflict galore to move their film along, but more importantly, there's the bracing, forthright life stories of each of the men, especially Craig Zupan, who winds up being the keenly alive, rampantly tattooed center of the tale. There's another component, shown without undue emphasis, of their recruiting for new members of the team among recently injured young men who are in the hospital, convalescing from wounds received while fighting in Iraq. Forget stereotypes: this is a real world you've never lived. 88m.

"Murderball" opens Friday at Landmark Century.

(2005-07-21)

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