If there’s one thing we do love to see on our screens, it’s a good underdog story. And if there’s two, then it’s sports underdog stories. Cool Runnings, Rocky, The Mighty Ducks, Remember The Titans, Welcome To Wrexham – you name it, we’ll sit here with our hearts in our throats, cheering wildly as our chosen heroes defy the odds time and time again. And George Clooney’s upcoming The Boys In The Boat, the Hollywood icon’s latest directorial effort, looks like it’ll be another welcome addition to the fist-pump filled canon. Check out the first trailer below:
Based on Daniel James Brown’s New York Times best-seller of the same name, The Boys In The Boat – adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith – tells the remarkable true story of the University of Washington rowing team. Consisting of a group of inexperienced amateurs, the team emerged from the shadows of the Great Depression to go for gold at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, defying naysayers and Nazis alike.
In this first trailer for Clooney’s film, we're introduced to two of this inspirational tale’s key figures. Firstly, there’s Callum Turner’s desperate outsider Joe Rantz, who joins the team for its promise of a steady job and food to eat, and who reflects as an older man on how he rowed, simply, “out of need”. And then we meet Joel Edgerton’s tight fist at the grindstone Coach Ulbrickson, a stern but spirited figure who sees the potential in the eight-man team he’s cobbled togethe:; “Everybody else gets tired and they just get stronger,” he marvels. Joining Turner and Edgerton to bring this story to life are Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike, Peter Guinness, Alec Newman, Luke Slattery, Thomas Elms, Tom Varey and Bruce Herbelin-Earle
Looking to combine the warmth of Clooney’s last film The Tender Bar with the political nous and social consciousness of the Ocean’s star’s earlier works behind the camera on the likes of Good Night, And Good Luck and The Ides Of March, this rags-to-rowing-riches drama could be pretty oarsome, indeed. We’ll see ourselves out. The Boys In The Boat releases in cinemas Stateside on Christmas Day, before a theatrical release in the UK on 12 January, 2024.