© Disney.
Rated: PG
Starring: Kevin Costner and Carlos Pratts
Directed by Niki Caro
Based on a true story, McFarland, USA is named for its setting in a small agrarian town in southern California largely populated by Mexican immigrants and their progeny.
Jim White (Kevin Costner) is a high school football coach in Boise, Idaho, circa 1987. An opening scene takes place in the locker room during half time. White is trying to deliver a pep talk, when he notices his star quarterback is snickering. Agitated by the player’s lack of focus, he hurls a shoe at the locker next to the lad. Unfortunately, it caroms off the locker and hits the quarterback in the head. It doesn’t take long before White is fired.
Turns out that this isn’t the first time White has been canned. Desperate for work, he reluctantly accepts an unattractive job at McFarland’s high school. White uproots his family—wife, Cheryl (Maria Bello), and daughters, Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elise Fisher). Upon arrival, they are overwhelmed by a sense of being culturally alienated. One of his perplexed daughters asks, “Are we in Mexico?”
White reflexively regards these Latinos as a menace to his family. He tells his wife that he isn’t going to expose his family to the perils of living among Latinos. She points out that after being fired from a series of jobs, he has run out of viable options. After clashing with the head football coach, White is reassigned to teaching physical education and bristles at being relegated to the lowly position.
White notices that several of the male students are blessed with natural endurance as runners, a byproduct of picking produce under the blistering heat. He has an epiphany and forms a cross-country team. White is greeted by skepticism. After all, isn’t cross-country dominated by affluent, well-funded, white schools? Undaunted, White recruits a septet of Mexican American students. The fastest, Thomas (Carlos Pratts), is plagued with family problems at home. What the team’s corpulent slowpoke, Danny (Ramiro Rodriguez), lacks in speed, he makes up for in heart.
Throughout his career, Costner’s innate athleticism has enabled him to convincingly portray sports figures. Now 60, Costner has transitioned to playing a savvy general manager of a NFL franchise in last year’s Draft Day and here, a beleaguered cross-country coach. The key to Costner’s performance in McFarland, USA is his begrudging transition from passive racist to a more enlightened status.
This is the fifth feature film for New Zealand director Niki Caro. In Whale Rider and North Country, Caro displayed skill depicting the gender challenges faced by a young Maori girl and an adult female iron mine employee, respectively. In McFarland, USA, she provides a sympathetic view of Hispanic produce pickers. Without proselytizing, the film conveys the notion that these hard-working laborers are underpaid and exploited. Despite being encumbered with a surfeit of genre clichés, McFarland, USA is an eminently likable and genuinely inspirational film.
