Discover The Story Of The 1936 Olympic Rowing Team In George Clooney's The Boys In The Boat Trailer
An inspirational true story turned into a bestselling novel is about to make its way to the big screen. That tends to be the natural playbook for these sorts of dramas, but this one in particular comes loaded with an extra amount of star power.
Based on author Daniel James Brown's book of the same name, "The Boys in the Boat" tells the well-documented events surrounding the 1936 Summer Olympics and the feats accomplished by the US men's rowing team from the University of Washington. As with other incredibly underdog stories, the stories of the individuals involved — all of whom were working class athletes struggling to come out the other side of the Great Depression, almost rivals the magnitude of their achievements. (Also see: the US men's hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, made up almost entirely of amateurs, upsetting the unstoppable Russians on their way to winning the gold medal, which was documented in the classic "Miracle on Ice" movie a year later.)
A few significant differences with "The Boys in the Boat," however, comes from its A-list director George Clooney and the historical backdrop of Nazi Germany hosting the Olympics while covering up their atrocities preceding the outbreak of World War II. Both factors take center stage in the newly-released trailer, featuring a slightly more upbeat take on the sport of rowing than we saw in David Fincher's "The Social Network" while foregrounding the performances of actors Joel Edgerton and Callum Turner. Watch the trailer up above!
Row, row, row your boat...
As if it weren't enough for an actor as talented as George Clooney to also be gifted with impossibly charming looks, the movie star sure seems like he has no plans of slowing down his directing career anytime soon. To date, his efforts on the other side of the camera haven't proven to be as successful as his performances, with impressive productions early on such as "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Good Night, and Good Luck," and "The Ides of March" tempered somewhat by recent misses like "Suburbicon" and 2020's "Midnight Sky." After most recently delivering the Ben Affleck-starring "The Tender Bar," Clooney appears to be right back in the awards-hopeful mode with "The Boys in the Boat."
If the rags-to-riches storyline, composer Alexandre Desplat's stirring score, and the sneakily strong cast wasn't enough to sway you, then the onslaught of inspirational imagery is almost guaranteed to beat you into submission. Directed by Clooney from a script by Mark L. Smith ("The Revenant," "Overlord," "The Midnight Sky"), "The Boys in the Boat" stars Joel Edgerton as the coach of University of Washington's rowing team and Callum Turner as student and rower Joe Rantz, along with Peter Guinness, Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban, Chris Diamantopoulos, James Wolk, and Hadley Robinson.
The film is due in theaters on Christmas Day, December 25, 2023.