Documentary packed with action, suspense

Sports film doesn't shy away from roughness of quad rugby

Murderball, the Winner of the Documentary Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, will be shown on the big screen at the OShaughnessy Nov. 11-13.

The movie is a powerful and poignant look at the men and their sport using humor, honesty and above all no pity.

Forget everything you thought you knew about quadriplegics and the wheel-chair bound, because the eye-opening pulse-pounding documentary film is an uncompromising view of the sport called quad rugby.

Made on a low budget, shot digitally and scored with a killer soundtrack, Murderball catches the sports chaotic action as well as the compelling stories of its players who have been humbled by their physical traumas.

Quad rugby is a messy mix of demolition derby, basketball, and hockey played in custom-made and combat-ready aluminum wheelchairs. Once the game gets going, nothing can prepare you for the chair-on-chair collisions in this unflinching gladiator style rugby played by men forced to live life sitting down.

This is one of those rare docs, like Hoop Dreams, where life provides a better ending than the filmmakers could have hoped for. Also like Hoop Dreams, it's not really a sports film; it's a film that uses sport as a way to see into lives, hopes and fear. Rober Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times

Steven Hunter, Washington Post wrote It doesn't look away, it looks at. It's an up-close and personal view of what is called quad rugby and, by extension, quadriplegic culture and life. It not only celebrates the spinally injured men (with limited use of all four limbs) who excel at this hyper-violent sport, it also removes the penumbra of difference from them. It turns out they're us, only in wheelchairs and the wheelchairs themselves turn out to be entirely incidental.

Directed by Dana Adam Shipiro and Henry Alex Rubin, the film follows the U.S. Paralympic Team for two and a half years and culminates with their quest for the gold medal in Athens at the 2004 Paralympic Games. Murderball is a story of world class athletes and their lives, as they struggle to stand up to pain and loss, love and sex, revenge and forgiveness even after the spirit and the spine have been crushed.

Showtimes are 4 and 7 p.m. on Nov. 11; 1, 4 and 7 p.m. on Nov. 12; 1 and 4 p.m. on Nov. 13.

Tickets are available at the box office two hours before each show and are $7 for adults and $5 for students.

Murderball is rated R for language and sexual content

For more information call 862-5371 or www.whitefishtheatreco.org.