Anyone calling himself "McG" ... and having the media accept it and do the same ... just can't be taken seriously.

Typical smart-ass Zacharek review. In this case it's especially inappropriate. To make fun of a funeral scene is about as low as you can get, especially when it's a true story and there are still survivors around.

This is just one in a seemingly endless series of drawn out, ostensibly heart-wrenching, substantively vapid sportsopics that cash in on the public's fondness for stereotyped heroes, slow-motion tackles, and southern accents so thick and drippy the words hardly matter. With McConaughey in the lead (who, in real life, has become a caricature of himself...or maybe a caricature of his character in this film...who can tell anymore) it's not surprising that the film is high on dross and low on subtlety. I'm sorry about this sad episode in Marshall's history, but I'm ever-so-grateful that Ms. Zacharek is (one hopes) saving the public a hard-earned $12 movie ticket on this one.

To Phyllis Gardner:

For God's sake, there's no such thing as objective storytelling. All storytellers are selective about facts and the way they present them. All filmmaking is interpretive, and the most we can hope for is enlightened subjectivity.

You seem to believe there's something sacred about these particular events. Perhaps there is. But that in no way means that the person telling his version of the story can't vulgarize or otherwise dishonor it. And if he does, we all have the right to call him on it.

Please try to make a distinction between real life and the films made about it. That's certainly what Stephanie Zacharek has done.

Possibly the two biggest things I couldn't care less about....

It's pretty safe to say: If Matthew McConaughey is in it, it sucks.

Don't believe me? Check out his resume on the imdb. Crap after crap after crap. Who can forget his touching 12-minute speech to the jury at the end of "A Time To Kill", where a single tear falls down his cheek?

Where to start - so I'll just say the posters here are bigots. Pure, simple, bigots. You're no better than racists.

Isn't it typical that the Salon reviewer focuses her derision on the movie and is blind to the event. I saw this movie and have seen some of the movies about 9/11. They all follow the same formula, and this one is no different. I would rank this one equal to to the 9/11 flicks - a flawed, but emotional film that punches the right emotional buttons. There was reverence to the survivors and it was indeed emotionally manipulating, which is what this genre is all about.

What pisses me off to no end is the elitism and the newfound appreciation of context in the review. If this movie were about 9/11 and New Yorkers, random passengers on planes or all the other "heroes" who died on 9/11, then the tone of the review would have been one of reverence and genuflection of all things 9/11 that we are accustomed to. We would have seen a blow job review like the ones about "Flight 93" and "World Trade Center." Instead, this movie is about hicks from West Virginia - so sharpen the knives and slice away! If Stephanie ever lived in a town like Huntington (I grew up 20 miles from a town where the campus population of 20,000 was 1/3 the town population) she would have known how devastating this situation would be. I was at that same campus at age 15 when Marc Buoniconti was paralyzed during a football game, and that was devastating. It affected the campus and the surrounding cities for a long, long time. I'm sure the hick coaches gave maudlin speeches and spoke in cliches, as I remember the newscasters did. That's what people do. Go back and watch the aforementioned 9/11 flicks and re-write your reviews based on the standard you set here. I don't think that they will be as flattering.

Amen to the previous post on arrogance.

Oh, what a load of bullshit.

Have you read anything this writer has written consistenlty about people who look down on people who don't live in places considered hip? No. You got pissed off by the review and made a bunch of assumptions.

This movie is NOT THE EVENT. Zacharek even says the story would make for a good movie. But then she says this isn't it. How is saying a movie is badly made, that it exploits a real story to jerk tears eithe a) dissing small-town people or b) a tragic event.

Christ if you can't tell the difference between movies and real life, you shouldn't be atack a writer who can.

the previous poster thankfully gives us some sense; i feel like pointing out a movie that zacharek has praised, atom egoyan's "the sweet hereafter," which deals with similar subject matter -- a busload of kids die when it skids off the highway and into a lake. also similar in tone because the movie is set in equally "hick"-y frosty canada. so the idea that zacharek is "arrogant" towards non-new yorkers is just ill-informed. to give an example, zacharek writes that "the sweet hereafter" "doesn't bow to the usual hand-wringing that often accompanies stories about the death of children."

it's amazing to me that people still think any movie on a worthy subject is therefore a worthy film. half the time i wonder if the people who jump on the movie criticism at salon even read the reviews -- they're very often essays, and yet the knee-jerk, simple-minded responses they generate are one-line dismissals.

No one is mentioning my original point, which is that Zacharet makes fun of a funeral. Here is what she said. "At Chris' burial, two of his surviving teammates drape his jersey lovingly over the gleaming mahogany casket -- we get a special overhead shot of this -- proving that art direction can triumph over death."

Maybe she would like to go read that line to one of the dead players' parents.

By the way, I have been reading Zacharek for a while now and I have always found her to be an arrogant smart-ass, and often wrong about movies, not just this movie.

That Zacharek likes The Sweet Hereafter proves nothing. It is set in Canada, not Appalachia. I would suspect Zacharek, and clearly several of the posters on this board, would not be interested in a real movie set here, only in junk like Wrong Turn, The Descent, or Deliverance. One poster here even says they would see no movie set in West Virginia. Imagine saying you would see no movie, or read no book, etc., about any place or people. This is blatant bigotry.

The starred letter also is bigoted. If these posters were talking about another race they way they are talking about Appalchian people, they would be deleted. The starred letter should be the one about typical Salon arrogance, not the one that has been singled out.

Thank God I haven't wasted any money on Salon. I am now removing it from my bookmarks.