The Rugby Player (2013) User Reviews

Resistance on United Flight 93

[Red-125 · 12 November 2013]

The Rugby Player (2013) is a documentary directed by Scott Gracheff. It stars a remarkable woman--Alice Hoagland, the mother of Mark Bingham, who died on United Flight 93.

Mark Bingham was a large, strong athlete and businessperson, who happened to be gay. He had a wonderful relationship with his mother Alice, who narrates most of the film. Alice is a verbal, intelligent person. She can paint a portrait of her son that makes us feel as if we'd known him.

Gracheff interweaves comments by Alice with interviews with Scott's friends and associates. We also see many videos of Scott, so that we can watch him progress from a shy young man to someone who was outgoing and sociable.

We can certainly believe that he was one of the passengers who apparently fought with the hijackers on the doomed flight, although we'll never know this for certain.

However, we know for certain that Scott was strong, tough, and fearless, and being gay was incidental to any of these qualities. The film is a reminder to judge people by what they say and do, not by their sexual orientation. (We shouldn't need this reminder, but we do.)

We saw this film at Rochester's Dryden Theatre, as part of Image Out--the Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It will work well on the small screen.

Too long and personal

[sjh-16 · 5/10 · 26 August 2014]

This documentary is about the life of Mark Bingham, a gay rugby player and passenger on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. It is narrated almost entirely by Mark's mother Alice and various other family members and friends. Alice and Mark clearly had a very strong bond and Alice is engaging and articulate. However, for me, too much of the movie was devoted to Mark's childhood and adolescence, including things like his tastes in music and his student pranks. It began to feel like a very personal movie, more about Mark as a son and friend, rather than as a person of interest to others. As an outsider, I was interested in the two aspects of Mark's life that make him an interesting character: being a gay man in the ultra-masculine sport of rugby, and being a passenger with the courage to rebel against the hijackers on the doomed plane. Mark is, of course, not able to tell his version of events, which for me was a big weakness in the film. Technically, it is well put together, and the editors have done a good job melding a dizzying amount of home movie footage, much of it taken by Mark himself, into a cohesive story. Still, it would have made a better one-hour telemovie than a full-length feature.