Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) has two weeks to come up with the remaining balance of his tuition bill or he will be kicked out of the University of Washington. He tries out for the school rowing team which would provide him with a stipend to help make ends meet, but he will need to be one of only eight out of the hundred or so hopefuls to impress Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) to earn a spot on the JV Rowing team. He proves to be a natural and once on the water, the JV team pulls off their first win in an upset. As the season goes on, they continue to shine on the river leading Coach Al to make the unconventional and controversial decision to send his JV team to the 1936 Summer Olympics hosted by Germany. 

George Clooney directs The Boys in the Boat, an inspiring sports drama from a Mark L. Smith penned script adapted from Daniel James Brown’s novel of the same name. From MGM Studios, the 124-minute period piece has that sepia sheen to it often associated with “Oscar bait” movies, complete with an Alexandre Desplat score that makes sure audiences are never confused about how to feel in any given moment. Despite the – ironically – uninspiring production elements, Clooney shows a maturity over his multi-hyphenate colleagues in remaining behind the camera for this one and he is able to focus more on delivering an engaging story and coaxing out performances from his cast that can still delight even though they are working with an underdog story that can practically write itself, especially since the events of the film are almost 90 years old. 

Rowing is a team sport and filmmaking is a team effort. Clooney has a clear vision for his film and The Boys in the Boat has a unified feel about it, but unfortunately, his ensemble management is lacking so other than Joe and Al, the film really struggles to flesh out the rest of the team. There are moments throughout where it tries to give these characters something to latch on to or work through, but we are so far removed from them that these individual stakes do not translate well as audiences might as well be seeing new characters during each trial. In the final moments of the film, as the team passes the victory wreath amongst themselves, it is embarrassing how little we recognize half of the titular boys in the boat. Further, the script is a little unsure if it wants to be Joe’s story or Al’s. It very much starts as Joe’s and will often fall back to the young athlete to drive more of the emotional beats of the story, but it also spends a considerable amount of time with Al working through his own arc. A better-balanced script could have pulled off this two sides of the same coin narrative by drawing some more similarities – or differences – in its two leads so that their arcs could better echo and complement each other, but as presented it feels like two very separate stories even though they are working on a unified goal. 

In front of Martin Ruhe’s lens, the cast handles the interpersonal drama rather well, and Ruhe is not looking to pull any tricks. For those who do have an expanded role, they really sell the camaraderie among them and the fraternal love they each share. It is not until the boys hit the water that the film becomes alive, though. Some of this is certainly due to the crystalline blue water that injects a nice splash of color into the frames that have otherwise been dominated by a golden dusty brown, but it is Tanya M Swerling’s editing, that is allowed to cut much faster on the river, that really makes these scenes so exciting. The other interesting thing about how the regattas are filmed is that they grow in intensity to match the importance of each subsequent race. Audiences will be forgiven if they feel a little unimpressed by the simple overhead shot in the first matchup despite the nice symmetry of the boat as it cruises across the frame, but as the team improves, Ruhe shoots with more interesting angles and Swerling becomes more frantic in her edit so that it is impossible not to get swept up in the excitement of it all. 

The Boys in the Boat is a carefully orchestrated piece that has the air of prestige about it but is told in the safest, most predictable way possible that the stakes are never truly felt and audiences can grow bored given the cyclical nature of the story with little more than some vague period elements that just convey a dusty feeling instead of an actual moment in time. There is no individuality to be found here. Clooney proves himself competent behind the camera, but he so stuck in the formula that he is afraid to take any risks. The result is a film that feels like it has already been seen before, and that overwhelming familiarity really pulls attention away from the performances of a cast that all do their best to stretch their thin characters.