Murderball (2005)
Paramount Pictures

Description

A film about tough highly competitive athletes: quadriplegic rugby players. Whether by car wreck fist fight or gun shot these men were forced to live life sitting down. This is a film about family honor, sex and the triumph of love over loss: about standing up even after your spirit and your spine has been crushed.

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Variety | Robert Koehler

Powered by a fantastic subject and real-life characters who would be difficult to invent, "Murderball" is a blast and a half - as entertaining as mainstream American docus get.
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10 digitallyobsessed.com | Rich Rosell

Murderball is a juggernaut of a documentary, full of excitement, emotion and human drama centered on the manic exploits of the U.S. Quadriplegic Rugby Team. It's not just a film about quadriplegia, it's a "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" story crammed with archenemies, diverse personalities and competitive drive.
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10 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

To consider the bleak months and sleepless nights when these men first confronted the reality of their injuries, and now to see them in the full force of athletic exuberance, is to learn something valuable about the human will.
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9.0 DVD Town | Justin Cleveland

"Murderball" is a heartwarming and touching portrait of a violent game. The people pictured within are well-worth admiring and their exploits worth recording.
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9.0 filmcritic.com | David Thomas

In addition to mining these stories for their dramatic value, the filmmakers, Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, also use them to illustrate what life is actually like as a quadriplegic.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

I've seen my share of documentaries, and I've seen a few that have dealt with disability. "Murderball" easily eclipses them all.
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8.8 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

Wait - it's not like something you've already seen. It's original, outrageous and murderous fun.
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5.0 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

It's closer in many ways to human-interest journalism than to traditional documentary cinema.
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