Invincible
``Invincible," another wedge of inspirational sports-movie cheese from Disney, is about Vince Papale, the unemployed but indefatigable 30-year-old Philadelphia-area native who hustled his way onto Dick Vermeil's Eagles in 1976. Mark Wahlberg plays Papale in the kind of earnest, hard-working performance that keeps a runny film tolerable. He's evolved into a dependable, entertaining star, the type about whom you can say, at last, ``This material is beneath him." But Wahlberg and the rest of the solid cast sell this ESPN equivalent of a Lifetime movie anyway.
Having been left by his wife and let go from his job as a substitute teacher, Vince finds himself borrowing money from his widowed father (Kevin Conway), a factory worker on strike. Nearly all Vince's time is spent with his boys down at the neighbor hood bar, whose owner (Michael Rispoli) gives Vince a pity bartending gig. They all play bruising tackle football in the dirty and muddy parking lots of South Philly, and eagerly await the day their beloved Iggles (as they're called in the local vernacular) shake off their blahs. (From the late 1960s and for most of the 1970s, the Eagles were a sub-.500 disaster.)
In an attempt to fix that, Vermeil (Greg Kinnear, well-meaning, but not terribly credible) is brought in from UCLA, and one of his first moves is to hold open tryouts, which Vince's buddies and his dad strongly urge him to attend. He does, and makes a good impression with his speed and determination. (In reality, Papale had a secure high school teaching job and was a wide receiver on a semi-pro team, which is how he caught Vermeil's attention. But where's the drama in that? Thank the movie's screenwriter, Brad Gann, for the Hollywood customizations.)
In any case, we see Vince putting his body through the grind of training camp, making it from one level of the tryout process to the next, until he's put on special teams coverage. At the time, Papale's hustle and his underdog status got him nicknamed Rocky, another local, albeit fictitious hero. (The Stallone movie had come out the same year.) But the makers of ``Invincible" forgo that fun fact, presumably for fear of redundancy.
The director Ericson Core, making his first feature, is also a cinematographer, so a lot of the camerawork in ``Invincible" is handsome and clever, like the shot of Wahlberg slumped on a bench that pulls away from him, onto the football field, and right into a play. Core seems as interested in the emotional rapport between the characters as he is in making sure the well-orchestrated football scenes sound like a war zone.
To give Vince something to hold besides a football, the filmmakers offer Janet (Elizabeth Banks), a romantically gun-shy New Yorker and teasing, trivia-filled Giants fan. These two take things slowly, and there's a simmer between Banks and Wahlberg that cuts through the relationship's trappings.
``Invincible," with its punny title, has the problem of drifting in and out of authenticity. A lot of it was shot on location in Philadelphia, but all the actors sound like they're from Brooklyn -- an acknowledgement that the Philadelphia accent is both unpretty and inimitable. Still, the men playing Papale's friends -- namely Rispoli, Kirk Acevedo, and Michael Kelly -- are all sweet in their own macho way. And so is the movie, in spite of its being shamelessly rigged for cheers.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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