“Unstoppable” (2024) is an adaptation of Anthony Robles’ autobiography cowritten with Austin Murphy, “Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated: How I Became a Champion.” Spanning from 2007 through 2011, it is the story about how Anthony became the leading high school and college wrestler though he was only born with one leg. Despite being the undisputed national champion in high school, Anthony (Jharrel Jerome) does not get recruited for a guaranteed spot on a college wrestling team except at Drexel University. He decides to stay in his hometown, Mesa, Arizona, with his family, which includes his number one fan, his mother, Judy (Jennifer Lopez). Will his character determine his fate?
Most life stories are so innately good that they succeed despite the movies’ flaws. In a vast field of sports biopics, “Unstoppable” is the weakest of them all by failing to make the onscreen Anthony as interesting as everyone around him. Even though it is a story about overcoming disability, the movie offers no other sense of who Anthony is as a person except his determination to overcome expectations because of his physical difference. The sequences are impressive and show how Anthony trains despite his obvious disadvantage, including carrying a torso size weight while running on a track with crutches. Everyone generally likes the athlete, but his inner life is restricted to wrestling and daddy issues even though he is conscious that his wrestling career potentially has an expiration date. Jerome has a strong resume that begins with his feature debut in “Moonlight” (2016), but he is a bit inert and wooden as the much beloved, hard-working wrestling inspiration. His physical performance is impressive because he has two legs, and anyone unfamiliar with Jerome would not know it, but his face’s emotional range is limited in this role. Other people define Anthony, and most of these real-life characters could easily be lifted from this movie and plopped into another sports movie as an archetype without making a ripple.
The real drama occurs outside of the wrestling ring when Anthony walks on eggshells around his legal father, Rick (Bobby Cannavale), a prison warden with a chip on his shoulder. Even though he is clearly an abuser, “Unstoppable” keeps it cute by limiting it to verbal abuse and heavily implying the physical abuse. First time director, former experienced editor, William Goldenberg, and cowriters Eric Champnella, Alex Harris and John Hindman humanize the father by giving Cannavale beats alone showing how Rick knows that he stands in the way of his own happiness, wistfully whispers asides about his own fatherlessness and wants to parent in a practical way. The suspense lies in when Anthony will stop taking his crap and stand up to his old man. The tension is whether he will be able to defeat Rick when he decides to fight him. The story revolves around waiting for his mom to give her blessing to the impending beat down. When the moment comes, it is too short but quite satisfying.
Rick and Iowa University’s wrestling team are depicted as embodying toxic masculinity because they see everything as a fight whereas Anthony’s strength is allegedly the opposite of it. Other than a speech that Arizona State University coach, Shawn Charles (Don Cheadle), delivers about the best fighters becoming Buddhists monks in service to peace and community spiritual development, it is an underdeveloped theme except maybe his adoration for his brothers and sister. There is one scene where he loses a wrestling match because sports commentators notice that he is unusually aggressive. That wrestling match did not seem noticeably different in tone than the others, so it is an epic fail if you need to tell your audience what they are seeing instead of conveying it. Goldenberg did not use the competition to further the story and reflect the personalities of the wrestlers.
The real counterpoint is Judy’s story, and how she goes from a deferential wife who feels like she cannot handle finances and support a family to a person who is ready to kick her husband to the curb and stand on her own two feet. Lopez does an effective job of balancing Judy’s delusions about her happy family and still being seen as a good mother, which is not an easy thing to do. Anthony has known that Rick is not the ideal husband and father that Judy seems to think that he is. It could look like Judy choosing an abusive man over her children, but it does not. There is an early scene where Lopez directs a line towards Rick and delivers it with more edge than where Judy is emotionally in the story, and it felt as if Lopez had a better handle on the material than the filmmakers. While Lopez has little to no film experience behind the camera, and “This Is Me…Now” (2024) has been wildly panned as out of touch, she does have experience playing these kind of characters without hitting the landmines that other actors like Blake Lively or Justin Baldoni have so it may have been a good idea to let her have a little more creative input. Her then husband Ben Affleck was an “Unstoppable” producer. Sadly Lopez does not bust out her moves from “Enough” (2002). She is one of the high points of “Unstoppable” as the person who refuses to let her son give up on his dreams even though she could use a little more money in the house or help with the kids.
“Unstoppable” does not give much coverage of Anthony’s life as a teenager outside wrestling or the family home. There are few women his age except as mean girls so do not expect romantic storylines, which is unusual for a teenager. His exchanges with people his age are stiff except when a young caterer (Andrew Santiago) gives him unsolicited advice about what he should prioritize: money, not accolades. Everyone, including Rick, his high school coach Bobby Williams (Michael Pena), and his coworker Eddie (Mykelti Williamson), offer the same no brainer advice. The film never conveys why Anthony prefers unpaid accolades other than so people would associate him with something other than his disability. Williamson, who is most famous for playing Bubba in “Forrest Gump” (1994), is still a scene stealer and provides much needed levity in a film that adheres to the same stale platitudes trotted out in such biopics.
Visually “Unstoppable” is nothing to write home about. When Anthony gets to Piestewa Peak, a rough terrain mountain in Arizona, before his teammates so he gets an early start on the three-mile ascent, it should be the most breathtaking moment in the film. It is completely uninspired except to depict how Anthony does not let bruises and scrapes deter him. Listen, anyone who is an athlete and willing to do anything remotely strenuous is impressive, but Goldenberg is a director who did not fully capitalize on making the environment stand out as a separate character. The closest that he gets is nighttime shots of the Philadelphia skyline from Rocky’s footsteps on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Robles, who played Jerome’s stunt double, deserved a better movie. If it was not for the cast, “Unstoppable” would be better suited for a television movie, and it is mostly going to streaming. If it does go to a theater near you, and you feel compelled to see it, go to a matinee showing. It is a paint by the numbers sports biopic that does to Robles exactly what he strived to transcend: being seen for his disability first.
