Sports movies have their own formula. The orchestral music swells, mud spatters, bodies get thrown to the turf, and our hero – despite his enormous talent – is the clear underdog because his opponents are grasping, vicious, downright evil sorts, so desperate to win they’ll break any and every rule.. Sprinkle in a few losses and some team disunity that’ll need to be overcome and you’ve got the makings of a pretty good but pretty typical Hollywood sports film.
So what makes Woodlawn so much better? It does contain more than a few of these same sports clichés, though this time they are fact, not fiction. This story is real and historic and unbelievable all the same. And what makes it better still is what it says about our God, Who made it all happen.
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 sports story that’s remarkable not just because it’s true, but for the truth it shares about our great God.
Grant Taylor doesn’t have a lot going his way. His car runs only sometimes, he’s not all that successful at work, and now he’s found out that he’s the reason why his wife can’t get pregnant.
He is shook. So he goes to God in prayer.
Facing the Giants is the second film from the Kendrick Brothers, a Baptist twosome who decided to use films to reach out to the unchurched. They’ve been using films like Overcomer and Courageous to draw folks in with the entertainment and then hit them right between the eyes with some gospel truths. Movies always have a moral, so a cinematic sermon isn’t exactly something new. What is new here is the upfront earnestness – not a lot of subtle going on. The point is to preach, even more than entertain.
But entertaining does happen. When Taylor is brought low, he’s forced to turn back to God. And when he repents of his apathy, he can’t help but share his new joy with the high school football team he coaches.
And, they respond. It’s one thing to be on a football team that only loses – that can be disheartening – but another to be on a team that realizes there’s more than one way to win. Coach Taylor pitches a new vision of success to his players:
“We need to give God our best in every area and if we win, we praise Him and if we lose we praise Him.”
As Proverbs recounts, when you serve God with all your heart, there’s a tendency for good things to follow. Hard work brings its reward (Prov. 10:4, Prov. 22:29, etc.) and we get to see the football team putting in that work via training montages and gritty game footage. Coach Taylor even pulls off one of the better practice-field inspirational speeches – your kids will love it when he pushes a lineman to dig deep and discover a reserve ten times bigger than he even knew he had to give.
That’s when the wins start stacking up, and winning isn’t the only ripple. Coach Taylor’s Godward vision for this team has bad students becoming scholars, and a father and son reconcile. Older teens will see some of the happiest happenings as bordering on cringe, and they ain’t wrong to think it. When one player’s crippled father gets out of his wheelchair, this has become simply too good to ring true.
But God can do anything. And this is far from beyond what God has already done, so I think we can rein in the criticism at least a little. My kids loved this up until about 12, and that’s what I would suggest it for: the less critical 12 and under set.
Cautions
The main caution would be a “prosperity doctrine” undercurrent. Coach Taylor gives himself to God, and then God gives him everything he ever wanted, from a new truck, to a child, to a championship too.
While it’s important for your kids to recognize this implicit theme, it’s an accidental inclusion, not intentional – the stunning turnaround is just the way of sports films overall. And I think the producers were aware of the danger, such that the prosperity gospel is pretty explicitly renounced. As Coach Taylor notes, “I’ve resolved to give God everything I’ve got and leave the results to Him.” Taylor isn’t pitching some guarantee to his family or team that God will make everything go their way so long as they pray hard enough.
Conclusion
Every sports film has the small guy stage a miraculous comeback to win it all. But Facing the Giants offers up a very different measure of success. Coach Taylor challenges his team not to make winning, but rather to make glorifying God, their goal.
That’s the vision we want our kids to understand and adopt too. So you know what would have been great to see? If the filmmakers could have shown someone succeed, not by winning the championship– that’s every other sports film’s story – but by losing the big game the right way.
It’s probably not giving too much away to say that we don’t see that happen here.
So what could have been a great story becomes merely a good one. Yes, it is preachy, and the acting is sometimes less than impressive (though not painfully so) but Facing the Giants could still have been something special if it had followed through on the sermon it was preaching – that we can honor God in failure too. Then it would have dared go where no other sports film has gone before.
But as it is, there are funny bits, some solid sports action, inspirational get-the-blood-pumping speeches, and some pleasant people and good kids learning important lessons. A nice evening for the family.
