The Boys In The Boat – Review

Release Date – 12th January 2024, Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 4 minutes, Director – George Clooney

The University of Washington junior rowing team finds themselves excelling at their sport, going from participating for the need for money to heading for the 1936 Olympics.

From the first frame of The Boys In The Boat you know exactly what George Clooney is going for with his latest directorial effort. The title cards and opening scene of an old man watching a child attempt to row down a river – despite speedboats and rowing teams racing past him – before reminiscing about what must be his own rowing past further cement this. This is going, and turns out, to be a very traditional sporting drama, one which would feel at home in the 70s and 80s alongside the likes of Chariots Of Fire, which this feels heavily influenced by.

We follow the University of Washington’s junior varsity rowing team, particularly Callum Turner’s Joe Rantz, from trying out for the team simply for needing money at the height of the Great Depression to potentially having what it takes to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Like the team, the film takes some time to find its pace and pull itself together – while the team have Joel Edgerton as their coach the film is somewhat left on its own to find a steady pace.

It’s once the central team properly unite to show their strengths in the sport that things begin to move. The races in particular, largely held in the second half, bring about much of the eventual engagement. The editing might sometimes throw you off as you’ve got no idea where the team actually are, or what’s being shouted at them by their cox (Luke Slattery), but it’s easy enough to reconnect with these sequences which act as the highlights of the film. Yes, the convention is very much still present in the surrounding moments, especially in the key build-up, but whilst unfolding there’s an unexpected level of tension and engagement to be found in the key races themselves, particularly in the final stretch of the film.

It’s these moments which mostly feel free of the familiar baggage that the rest of the film carries. They may cut back to Joe’s distant father (Alec Newman), who left him alone when he was 14, and girlfriend (Hadley Robinson) respectively listening to race coverage on their radios, alongside occasionally reminding us of the feelings of one or two other team members, but such points are largely present in the wider narrative. Moments best left as brief cut-to moments as they feel little developed in the first place. Most of the time dropped in every now and then with little impact before the film moves back on with the central team. Simply more conventional points in an already conventional, although seemingly aware of this in its traditional vein, sporting underdog movie. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but it generally does what it does rather well once its found its pace.

While some strands feel underdeveloped the base of The Boys In The Boat makes for a traditional, if very conventional, sporting drama where the highlights lie in the key races which store a good deal of unexpected tension.