The Little Boat That Could
By Eric Cox
Americans love an underdog. This may seem paradoxical, given America's status as the world's lone superpower, but the impulse to root for the little guy seems to be buried deep in the American psyche.
Perhaps it is rooted in the country's humble origins, its improbable victory against the world's greatest power during the American Revolution. Probably it was strengthened by the intersection of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic--which led people to believe that they could rise above their present condition with hard work--and by America's historic openness to immigrants, who flock to the country believing that here, anything is possible.
At any rate, this impulse is evident in virtually every American sports movie ever made. We never seem to tire of cheering for Rocky or Seabiscuit.
The formula doesn't always work, of course, but when it does, the euphoria we feel seems like a brand new, totally unexpected sensation.
The latest film to successfully tap into the American underdog gene is Madison, loosely based on the true David-versus-Goliath story of Jim McCormick, the 1971 American Power Boat Association (APBA) Gold Cup winner from the economically distressed city of Madison, Indiana.
Madison, nestled along the Ohio River, is one of the cities on the APBA professional circuit. In fact, it is the only city to own its own boat, the Miss Madison.
Once a boom town due to its strategic shipping location, Madison had become a shadow of its former self by 1971. When the local factories that once shipped goods along the river and were the town's largest employers closed down, Madison's economy, like that of many rust-belt towns, stalled.
That is the situation at the beginning of the movie. Paralleling the town's fate, the crew of the Miss Madison is also struggling. Unable to spend the same kind of money as its well-financed competitors, the Miss Madison team, led by McCormick (Jim Caviezel), are constantly patching up their boat after a series of blowouts and other mishaps.
McCormick no longer races himself, due to a terrible accident that killed one of his best friends and left him wounded. Instead, he acts as the crew chief.
The connection between the personal struggles of the Miss Madison crew and the travails of the city that owns the boat and depends on the racing industry for its economic vitality is the heart of Madison. Indeed, the interdependence of the individual and the community is very reminiscent of Frank Capra's best films.
As Jim McCormick, Caviezel is the perfect Capra hero, and his performance in Madison is magnificent.
But this is an ensemble piece. McCormick's relationships with his wife Bonnie (Mary McCormack) and his young son, Mike (Jake Lloyd), play as prominent and important a role in the movie as does the racing storyline.
The excellent supporting cast includes Paul Dooley as the mayor of Madison, and Bruce Dern as a retired boating legend who reluctantly agrees to help the Miss Madison crew attempt to win the Gold Cup.
Although Madison's ending is a foregone conclusion--in the best tradition of Hollywood underdog movies--it is a rewarding one nonetheless.
The film's one flaw is that some crucial information about Jim McCormick's history is established in a long voiceover that opens the film, before one has met any of the characters and before half of the audience has even returned to the theater with their popcorn. The crucial information is dramatized about midway through the film in a flashback, but by that point it is fairly superfluous.
Madison was originally set for national release in 2001, before Caviezel and Lloyd had gained fame by portraying Jesus and the young Darth Vader, respectively. Whatever the reasons it was kept on the shelf for almost four years, Madison certainly deserves an audience now.
Eric Cox is a research fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research and a movie columnist for TAEmag.com.
