Forget General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, Eastenders, and Coronation Street; sport is the real, never-ending soap opera. Brimming with scandal, controversy, jubilation, and despair, it is a composite of emotional investment and drama that's typically unpredictable in nature. From gladiatorial combat in Roman amphitheaters, to the original Olympics in Ancient Greece, sport was (and at times, still is) a matter of life and death, fierce competition, and the height of physical prowess, except if your names are Jeff, Walter, and Donny and you bowl at the Hollywood Star Lanes on the Santa Monica Boulevard…
In 1888, Parisian Louis Le Prince answered the question ‘What do you give something that has everything?’ That something is sport, yet Le Prince was the source of arguably the greatest gift given to the sporting world: film. Since conceiving the idea and subsequent invention of a motion picture camera in 1888, film and sport have enjoyed a flourishing, mutually beneficial relationship. While the two entities can of course independently exist, film offers the ability to broadcast sport to a global audience, so it can be consumed and enjoyed anywhere in the world. Sport provides film companies with intriguing and unpredictable narratives that play out indiscriminately in front of its audience. Aside from live sport (which, when televised, is itself a kind of cinema), sports films are naturally a popular choice at the box office, especially that of the zero-to-hero narrative. Here are some of the best zero-to-hero sports films, where rooting for the underdog pays off.
5 Rudy
Rudy follows the story of Daniel Eugene “Rudy” Ruettiger, an adolescent who dreams of playing American football at Notre Dame, a top university in Indiana. Rudy simply cannot financially afford to attend college, and his size hampers his chances of representing the university in football. However, through a series of arm-bending and mutually beneficial friendships, Rudy gets a shot at his dream against all odds. The film stars a young Sean Astin and Jon Favreau long before their Lord of the Rings and MCU days.
4 Cool Runnings
Located on the tip of a mountain in the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica is a place known for its beauty, tropical climate, booming tourism, and unquestionable talent on the Athletics track. The country is about as far removed from the snowy alpines of the Alps or Colorado’s Breckenridge as one can get. So, unsurprisingly, Jamaica had never entered a competitor at the Winter Olympics, until 1988…
Cool Runnings follows the story of the first-ever Jamaican bobsleigh team, their aspirations, and the subsequent fight to make it to the Calgary Winter Olympics. The ever-lauded John Candy took on the role of the initially doubtful trainer, Irving Blitzer, while Leon Robinson, Doug E. Doug, Malik Yoba, and Rawle D. Lewis are delightful as the Jamaican team. While it isn’t a conventional zero-to-hero sports flick where the subjects become all-conquering, it captures the sentiment of the underdog and the never-say-die attitude of the four Jamaican history-makers.
3 The Damned United
The name Brian Clough may not ring bells of familiarity to anyone outside the footballing world. If he was still gracing this earth today, he’d urge you to get to know his name; in fact, he’d force you, for the firecracker Clough was, by his own admission, “not the best manager in the business, but in the top one.” The Damned United starred Michael Sheen as the irrepressible ex-football player turned football manager Brian Clough as the film details the rise of one of British football’s most illustrious figures.
Following a playing career prematurely ended by injury, the egomaniacal Clough turned his hand to football management at the lower ebbs of the professional pyramid in England, at Hartlepool United. Director Tom Hooper’s picture accurately traverses Clough’s time and vast successes at Derby County, a struggling second division side ailing near the foot of the table. Their rise under Clough’s punctilious stewardship saw them become champions of England. Michael Sheen's performance here is one of his best.
2 Cinderella Man
James J. Braddock, more commonly known as Cinderella Man, was a heavyweight boxer during the 1920s and 30s. Russell Crowe’s portrayal of the seemingly luckless, journeyman boxer in director Ron Howard’s biopic shows the immense hardship experienced by a family living on the breadline. The film poignantly depicts Braddock and his wife Mae’s (Renee Zellweger) battle to provide for their three children. Despite the cruel hand he’s been dealt, James is governed by his unyielding principles and morally steadfast approach, and maintaining his family’s pride and integrity is foremost in his mind.
As the grim reality of the Great Depression started to seep through the cracks in his and his young family’s lives, Braddock takes to the ring again, and unbeknownst to him, this decision is going to change his life for the better. Cinderella Man is a flick that proves that it isn’t those with the most talent that necessarily come out on top, but those willing to dedicate themselves to hard work.
1 Rocky
To this day, people from around the world make the pilgrimage to Philadelphia and retrace the steps taken by Rocky Balboa as he ascended the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and raised his arms to the ‘Gonna Fly Now’ needle drop in the movie. Rocky (Sylvester Stallone), a rather inconsequential boxer, lands the fight of his dreams against Apollo Creed in a film that, in retrospect, follows a well-trodden zero-to-hero path that we’ve seen Hollywood screenwriters chew up and spit back out in a slightly altered form a million times over.
However, what makes Rocky so special is not just the fact that he ultimately loses in the first film, but the whole “me against the world” mentality as depicted by the lonesome dawn runs, the incessant bare-knuckle punching of the butcher’s meat, and the dead-set focus in Stallone's eyes. It doesn't matter if he wins or not, because he pushes himself to his absolute best; it’s about the average Joe pursuing his dreams, that those less courageous (or with fewer means) pin their hopes on and live vicariously through.
What makes Rocky even more distinctive is that Stallone himself penned the script, and spent years pestering Hollywood hotshots to get it made. He was finally able to pull it together, and this little film (made ro less than $1 million but grossing $225 million at the time, which amounts to more than $1 billion in today's economy) went on to earn 10 Oscar nominations, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. This ultimate underdog story offscreen is almost Rocky-esque itself.