Murderball

If you think you know quadriplegics, this movie will probably show that you don't.

This documentary follows the US Quad Rugby Team, sometime world champs, through about three years of competition.

With a soundtrack often supplied by, surprisingly, Ministry, this movie is fast-paced, dramatic, and often funnier than even the better comedies playing against it in other theaters in the multiplex.

Much of the drama surrounds the fact that their main competitors, the Canadian team, is coached by a man, Joe Soares, who once was a lead player on the US team. He's viewed as a traitor by the US players but he feels he was robbed by not being allowed to become the coach of the US team. Not wanting to leave the game, he gladly accepted the challenge of coaching the Canadians.

Every good team has at least one player who is the engine of the team by playing well and playing hard in a "take no prisoners" fashion, and on the US team this person is Mark Zupan, who is so fascinating and charismatic that I think that eventually he may be cast in fictional movies. As for the Canadians, Soares seems to perform that function, but we learn much less about the Canadians than the Americans.

Neither Zupan nor Soares can be described as "pleasant" people, especially Soares, who almost goes out of his way not to be pleasant. Nevertheless, they are both admired and respected for their prowess.

The movie moves from competition to preparation for the next one, to that competition and prepping for the next one, and so on until the final showdown at the 2004 Olympics in Greece.

The glory of winning and dealing with loss are always themes in movies about sports, and this one is no exception. The one thing you may come away with from this movie is an understanding that just because someone is in a wheelchair and is dealing with impaired physical functionality, it doesn't follow that they compete any less strenuously than "normal" people.