A masterpiece in just about every way. No handholding in the writing; just context clues. It's like watching a documentary, it's truly a Fly on the Wall film. Every shot is crammed, even the few aerial ones, it makes you feel like you're there. It's so immersive and feels so real. THe only thing that breaks this immersion is the unique training montage. I think it serves its purpose, but breaks from the immersive language of the rest of the film in such a way that it would have been better to axe it for a more standard, intercut sequence.

The colors are really something; I haven't seen the special features so forgive me, but I'm assuming it was shot in digital LOG/RAW, colorized EXTREMELY well, and then added a subtle film grain filter on top of the entire film. It works extremely well for every scene, but may come off as a bit cheesy during the Texas and Iraq cutaways. The mock-camcorder footage wasn't very well done and thus broke some immersion as well, but it makes up to little of the film to make much of a dent in the story.

I'm not even gonna talk about the story in much detail. It's complexly heartwarming. Extremely valuable. We need more films like this.

Acting was stellar, the script supervisors knew what they were doing, the specialists who know about the sport, sports broadcasting, the Marines, everything is just spot on, and that realism was communicated to everybody who worked on this film to create something immensely fantastic and again, extremely immersive. Bravo. Take notes, current and future filmmakers. They got it so right.

5/5