Undefeated (2011)

Undefeated is a documentary filmed around a single high school football season and it uses the lives of 4 characters, Coach Bill McCourtney, and players O.C. Brown, Chavis Daniels, and Montrail “Money” Brown, to tell a story about race, class, and family. The race theme pops out almost immediately as the coach is white and the players are all black and, if the class theme didn’t hit you before, it certainly hits you by the time Brown arrives in an all-white neighborhood to receive tutoring and, upon seeing people jogging, remarks that in his neighborhood, “You don’t see people running unless they’re running from the police.”

At first glance one would think it would be the theme of race that would receive the heavy focus but it is rarely remarked upon, save for a a single scene when the local newspaper publishes a story about Brown’s tutoring and receives angry letters pointing out that “it is always a football player” who receives help, alluding, perhaps, to the movie The Blind Side. Indeed, it is class and family that receive the bulk of the focus with the discussions of the players’ need to get into a good college in order to move up the social scale and the players family lives. As well as the coaches.

Indeed, it is the theme family, especially fatherhood, that shows how much Bill McCourtney has in common with the black players. His father split when he was very little and, as he put it, “I know how it feels” and much of the movie is about him trying to be a good father figure and role model to the players, a task he seems to pull off. He coaches them not just on how to play football but also the importance of discipline and hard-work, a task that usually falls to the father in the family. He even shares some cologne with one of the kids. And it is family, that also gives us his reason to quit coaching high school football, as he realizes he needs to look to his own kids first.

Undefeated uses each of these themes to tell a marvelous story and, while it is one that has in our age been told a million times, the themes of fatherhood and family will always be relevant.


Undefeated. Dir. Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin. Weinstein Company, 2011. DVD.