Drama
123 minutes / 2015
Rating: 9/10

Directors of movies about sports sometimes get carried away with their art – swelling orchestral music fills the soundtrack as mud spatters over our athletic hero, who despite his talent, is an underdog against evil, cheating opponents. Sprinkle in a few losses and some team disunity that must be overcome and you’ve got a pretty typical Hollywood sports movie.

Woodlawn does contain a few of these clichés, but surprisingly most of them are not fantasies – they’re real and historic, and form an uplifting tale that seems almost too amazing to be true.

As high schools become racially integrated in Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1970s, tensions run high at predominantly white Woodlawn High School. Parents aren’t happy with the coaching staff when black students earn starting positions on the football team.

When Christian sports chaplain Hank Erwin asks permission to speak to the football team after a riot at the school, Coach Tandy Gerelds reluctantly agrees. He’s stunned when each and every player on the team, black and white, respond to Erwin’s altar call and dedicate or re-dedicate their lives to Christ. In time, the team decides that devoting their season to the Lord is more important than winning or losing, and – what do you know! – they find athletic success along the way.

Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (also known for the 2018 film I Can Only Imagine) wrote the movie about the work of their dad Hank, who later became a state senator, and who had a profound influence on the young men of Woodlawn High School and their cross town rivals. Most details in the movie, even the ones that seem too convenient or unlikely to have happened, are based on real events: Woodlawn is a morality tale with great lessons that just happens to be true.