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'Murderball' offers compelling glimpse of quad rugby

"How did you eat pizza with your elbows?" a boy asks one of the quadriplegic rugby players in "Murderball," a hyped documentary that never quite lives up to its evocative title, nor its wave of effusive buzz.

The answer to the child's question doesn't require a verbal response or a demonstration of pizza-eating proficiency. You only have to observe the wheelchair athlete hit the court for a game of Murderball, or quad rugby, and hear the clank and crunch and grunt of the sport, a conjunction of demolition derby, team athletics and gladiatorial aggression. The answer will be obvious, leaving a stunned, quivering word on your lips, a quiet little "Oh."

ThinkFilm 'Murderball' 3 out of 5 stars Directors: Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro Cast: Keith Cavill, Joe Soares, Mark Zupan Run time: 88 minutes Release date: July 22, 2005 Rating: R for language and sexual content. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Still, you might wish for less mozzarella and more Murderball. Filmmakers Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro make certain that their movie uses the esoteric sport as a springboard into a bigger, more inclusive world beyond the rambunctious dynamics of the playing field. They accomplish a full-blooded, personality-filled portrait of human lives — including that of Austin-based player Mark Zupan — which is by turns inspiring and depressing, exhilarating and heartbreaking.

Human connection is everything in this kind of documentary, but here it is made at significant cost. The movie, shot on digital video, fails to explain the apparently fervent universe of quad rugby and answer some nagging, fundamental questions: How popular is the sport and what kind of audience follows it? How much money is put into the game, which has a slot in the international Paralympic Games? Are there sponsors? How does one train or practice for wheelchair rugby?

Rugby is not the most popular sport in America, so a crash course in the rules and objectives of the game seems small to ask. The film never illuminates the sport, so it's difficult to gauge how extraordinary the men's efforts are or what they're trying to do on the court.

"It's basically kill the man with the ball," quips one of the half dozen or so players profiled in the movie, explaining nothing. The game's inherent violence raises another, less pressing question: Why would some of these young men who were paralyzed by violent events, such as a car crash, bullet or brawl, want to partake in more physical peril and risk further injury? The answer is not forthcoming.

Without helmet or pads, the Murderballers thrust themselves across the basketball court, which substitutes for grassy rugby fields, charging the man with the big leather ball in souped-up wheelchairs. The armored wheels of the chairs resemble the trash-can lids pummeled to a percussive clamor in "Stomp"; they are pocked with angry dents.

The sport is not as violent as you'd think. While collisions are the norm, the worst that happens is the occasional tip-over or half-airborne chair. In the overly telescoped play we are shown, Rubin and Shapiro often amp up the action with grinding speed metal and point-of-view cameras affixed to the wheelchairs.

Zupan, the Austin player who looks like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Joe Soares, the apoplectic coach of the Canadian team, are the film's nominal stars — two mean, determined men on opposite sides of the fuming United States-Canada rivalry.

A freak car wreck put Zupan in his wheelchair, a thorny drama involving a best friend whose guilt about the accident makes for powerful moments of reconciliation. A rabid sportsman with a lifetime of chips on his shoulder, Soares was part of the U.S. team before being fired and fleeing to the Canadian outfit. He has a beveled military face that can open up to reveal a cold rictus. His mouth-foaming resolve to clobber the American team consumes him to the near-neglect of his non-athletic son, who plays classical music.

Spirit, struggle and all-American resiliency are the themes blazing through "Murderball" with affecting power. Zupan and his teammates are likable guys with engrossing stories — hard, reallife stuff that caroms from how they landed in a chair to, with help from a morbid medical instruction video, how they perform sexual intercourse.

Despite the movie's contextual thinness, it strikes emotionally deep, particularly during the climactic showdown of teams U.S.A. and Canada at the Paralympics in Athens, Greece. We learn plenty about human resolve and physical ruggedness, and that eating pizza with your elbows is child's play when you've conquered so much else.