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12 Mighty Orphans

2021

Ty Roberts

Luke Wilson, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Vinessa Shaw ...

5.9

229

Drama Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.

	Media	Author	Review
		Tim Grierson Screendaily	"[It] turns that true-life tale into an exceedingly predictable feel-good drama, draining the story of resonance (...) A musty approach"
		Peter Martin Screen Anarchy	"[Several elements] make '12 Mighty Orphans' stand out. First is the comfortable chemistry between Luke Wilson and Martin Sheen; it's respectable and often quite funny"
		Carlos Aguilar rogerebert.com	"[It] is engineered to rouse emotions with uncritical pride, never reaching the less immaculate corners of the historical period it employs as canvas (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Jenny Nulf Austin Chronicle	"One of the most generic and boring sports movies to have ever been made (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"
		Peter Debruge Variety	"Square but satisfying (...) '12 Mighty Orphans' manages to subvert a few of the expected clichés to reasonably original effect"
		Mike D'Angelo AV Club	"It's based on a true story, but that doesn't prevent it from feeling manufactured (...) dopt 12 Mighty Orphans only if you’re in the mood to see a movie simultaneously for the first and the umpteenth time."
		Jared Mobarak The Film Stage	"Effective underdog sports drama tugs on the heartstrings"
		Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post	"A dramatic true tale of unlikely triumph over adversity (...) so primal and insistently button-pushing that it seems to have inspired all other similarly themed athletic fictions (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Andrew Crump The Playlist	"It’s frustratingly haphazard in its structure, the source of both its successes as a crowd-pleaser and its failures as a biodrama"

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