The Senior

Pure cornball... and pure heart. This true story of a grandpa who returned to play college football is an old-fashioned sports flick with a touch of that old time religion.

“He’s like a 59-year-old Rudy,” one of the coaches in “The Senior” comments, making the obvious connection to the conventions of the sports drama genre before the audience can.

This movie starring Michael Chiklis as a grampa who returns to his old college 37 years later so he can play out his senior of football is pure cornball… and pure heart. It’s a hokey based-on-true movie that knows it’s hokey, embraces that tone and leans into all the clichés of sports flicks. And does it well.

I suppose this is the sort of movie I would have scoffed at when I was younger. Now that I’m closer to the character’s age than college myself, such rank sentimentality stirs the butterflies in the stomach more than agitates the cynical brain.

I don’t mind admitting part of me didn’t want to like this movie, but it won me over.

It starts in 1970 with Mike Flynt as the captain of the Sul Ross State University Lobos in west Texas. He’s an undersized middle linebacker who plays with constant rage, instilled in him by his father who insisted men don’t back away from a fight and never cry. Unfortunately, it tends to result in a lot of scrums both on and off the field, and eventually his antics get him booted off the team and expelled from college right before his senior year.

Flash to 2007 and Mike is now a father and grandfather, a good guy but still prone to fits of violence. We see him beat up a clod-headed dude during a traffic stop, and even if the guy deserved it Mike knows he’s got to get a grip on his emotions.

Mary Stuart Masterson plays his wife, Eileen, who loves the man with all her heart but doesn’t blind herself to his many faults. Chief among them is his stilted relationship with his son, Micah (Brandon Flynn), a teacher who’s everything he’s not. Mike thought he was passing on the tough lessons of his own dad while ditching the hurtful stuff, but it’s obvious Micah doesn’t see it that way.

While reluctantly attending his team reunion, Mike mentions that losing out on his senior year remains the biggest regret of his life. Someone mentions that because he didn’t play, he technically still has his last year of eligibility. It plants a seed that grows, and he attends a summer tryout for walk-ons.

The coach, Sam Weston (Rob Corddry), assumes he’s joking but humors him. Mike has kept his muscles honed with boxing and other exercise, though he’s got a typical middle-aged spread in the midsection. But he does well enough he’s invited back for tryouts before the school year.

Things go from there. Mike is initially ridiculed by teammates one-third his age, but gradually wins them over with his toughness and mentorship. He bangs the rust off his gridiron skills and surprises everyone, including himself, by making the team. As part of the deal he also re-enrolls at Sul Ros as a student, though the movie doesn’t concern itself too much with the boring classroom stuff.

Mike faces typical second-act challenges. An enmity with a bully on the team. A serious injury that put him into rehab and could potentially keep him off the field the entire season. Loving concern from Eileen and Micah that he rejects, eventually threatening the stability of those relationships.

I don’t think I need to tell you where things wind up, because every sports movie there is ends in glory of some sort or another.

Chiklis gives an engaging and believable performance as a guy haunted by his past, which contributes to tension in the present. At 62 — and with the aid of some solid stunt double work — he mixes it up in pads and helmet well enough that we buy him as a college player, if one who mostly rides the pine, yelling encouragement.

“The Senior” is directed by Rod Lurie (“The Contender,” “The Outpost”), who’s had a solid career and is notable for being one of the exceedingly rare film critics who successfully made the jump to filmmaking. (Fear not, I harbor no such ambitions.) The screenplay is by Robert Eisele (“The Great Debators”).

It’s being distributed by faith-based Angel Studios, and there is certainly a touch of the old-time religion here, though it doesn’t really get expressed until fairly late in the story — and then quite gently. I think mainstream audiences could watch the whole film and not realize they’re being proselytized to, so light is the touch.

This is a movie that, as much as it contains football, is a lesson about it never being too late to reinvent ourselves and forgive our past transgressions. It’s an idea worth rooting for.