Reviews

• It's as engaging, as modest, as utterly American and as thrilling as the true-life story it's based on.

  Sheila Benson - Los Angeles Times
  
  26 April 2013

• In the way it combines sports with human nature, it reminded me of another wonderful Indiana sports movie, "Breaking Away." It's a movie that is all heart.

  Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times
  
  26 April 2013

• The pieces of the drama are put forth like the shapes of the five fingers of a hand, and finally they find a kind of awkward unity that was predictable from the start. And yet, the gesture of it all is utterly captivating, the way a dream would be if it ever really came true.

  Peter Stack - The San Francisco Chronicle
  
  26 April 2013

• Hackman anchors the movie with a performance of remarkable control. You see his hurt in his glances at his shoes, his little phony chuckle; you can feel him carrying his secret -- it's a rage held together with rubber bands. This is the Hackman of "The Conversation," not "The French Connection."

  - The Washington Post
  
  26 April 2013

• Yet much of the movie's validity stems from time and place recreated with such authenticity that you can sense the wet chill in the morning air and the new wax pungent on the old gym floor.

  Rita Kempley - The Washington Post
  
  26 April 2013