Real human drama doesn’t get much more gripping than this documentary about the sport of paraplegic rugby, in which even the game’s winners must learn to live, day
after day, with the agony of some sort of defeat. As it follows these young men, most of whom have ended up in wheelchairs because of car accidents or childhood sicknesses, Murderball gives them the utmost dignity – that is, the chance to be people first, whether angry or noble, brave or scared. Like the games’ players, who routinely wheel out on the court only to have their chairs entirely upended, the movie has guts to spare.
