12 MIGHTY ORPHANS review: Luke Wilson and Martin Sheen shine in a throwback football drama

12 Mighty Orphans feels like a movie from another time. We don’t get many mid-tier sports dramas these days, and there’s something extremely comforting about the familiar beats of a movie like this, even if it isn’t necessarily a touchdown.

Set during the Great Depression, 12 Might Orphans tells the real-life story of the Mighty Mites, a team made up of players from a tough orphanage in Fort Worth, Texas. Lacking the funds to even afford a real football at the start of their season, the Mighty Mites eventually made it all the way to the Texas State Championships. Their inspiring run was in large part due to their forward-thinking coach Rusty Russell (played by the always welcoming Luke Wilson), a well-respected high school coach who gave up his cushy job to teach football at an underprivileged orphanage, and who invented many plays that have since become standard in today’s game.

Rusty Russell’s arrival initially doesn’t make much of an impression with the orphans, other than ogling his wife Juanita (Vanessa Shaw) who also begins teaching at the orphanage. The young boys have been physically and mentally beaten down by a vicious administrator (played with ruthless glee by Wayne Knight), and starting a football team is the last thing on their minds.

Russell ends up roping in the orphanage’s physician (played by the legendary Martin Sheen, who also narrates the film) as the team’s defensive coach, and thus begins the team’s unlikely slow rise to success.

In many ways, if you’ve seen one sports drama you’ve seen them all, and that’s also part of their endless appeal. 12 Mighty Orphans never shies away from those familiar tropes, but the film’s director Ty Roberts (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Lane Garrison and Kevin Meyer, based on the book by Jim Dent) also tries to place the team’s unexpected success within the context of the Great Depression and the lingering trauma of Russell’s time in WWI.

Much of the film’s sentimentality and appeal comes via Sheen’s narration, which adds a Ken Burns-like feel to the proceedings. That narration ensures that 12 Mighty Orphans never feels much like a modern movie, even though it was finished in the midst of the pandemic. Some viewers may find it a bit hokey or old-fashioned, which is likely just what will appeal to others who long for that period in the ’90s when sports dramas like this seemed to appear on HBO each week (and then play indefinitely).

The performances are strong across the board, in particular, Luke Wilson’s typically warm and resonate scenes with Sheen and the players. In a fairly remarkable twist, the film also marks Sheen’s on-screen reunion with the great Robert Duvall after their landmark work on 1979’s Apocalypse Now (Duvall has a small role as a financier here).

12 Mighty Orphans is a perfect Sunday afternoon movie. You don’t need to be a diehard football fan (or even really know much about the game) in order to keep up with this inspiring true story about a scarred coach leading a team of scrappy new players to the big leagues. The presentation can be a tad heavy-handed, and Wilson’s 11th-hour locker room speech doesn’t wring out the tears the way a Coach Taylor speech would (Texas Forever!), but it’s hard to fault a film that clearly wears its heart on its ratty jersey sleeve like this.

12 Mighty Orphans is in theatres now.