Compiled by Staff
St. Louis sports fans will enjoy the new movie, “American Underdog; The Kurt Warner Story” which got the prestigious release date of Christmas day, because so many of them lived it. In 1999 when the St. Louis Rams quarterback Trent Green went down with an injury a relatively. unknown player named Kurt Warner came in to replace him. As so many remember, he had played in the Arena Football League and even worked at the Hy-Vee Grocery Store stocking shelves before leading the Rams to the Super Bowl in 2000.
As the movie website synopsisis says the movie is the inspirational true story of Kurt Warner, who overcomes years of challenges and setbacks to become a two-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl champion, and Hall of Fame quarterback. Just when his dreams seem all but out of reach, it’s only with the support of his wife, Brenda, and the encouragement of his family, coaches and teammates that Warner perseveres and finds the strength to show the world the champion that he already is.”
The movie starts briefly in Warner’s childhood establishing that he always dreamed of being number 13 and scoring a winning touchdown in a key NFL game, even from an early age– and ends up with the Rams winning the Super Bowl. There really isn’t a lot that Rams fans during that time don’t know about, including that Brenda Warner was a former Marine and she had a special needs child when she met Warner because it was covered by the St. Louis media. The movie, however, goes into detail and lets the viewer into a lot of the background to these stories.
Both Kurt and Brenda Warner were executive producers on the show and Dennis Quaid played former Rams head coach Dick Vermeil with Anna Paquin playing Brenda– both adding star power to the movie.
It will probably play a lot differently in other NFL cities where the fans don’t know so much about the back-story, but on Sunday (the second day it was released) St. Louis fans at the Marcus Theater (Ronnies) really enjoyed the nostalgia and getting to relive some of the events. One man nudged his wife and said “I remember when he bought that house” as they showed the Warners buying their first house in St. Louis. Another woman (mother of the boy in the Warner jersey in the photo) said, “He’s wearing his dad’s jersey.”
Fans recognized actors portraying many of the heroes from the “Greatest Show on Turf” including Marshall Faulk and Isaac Bruce.
At the end of the movie the theater erupted in clapping and then most stayed for the credits and there were a few extra clips of real footage of Warner and his special needs son Zach and they clapped after that was over also.
There was a beautiful song called “Love Changes Everything” by Vince Gill with Mickey Guyton. To hear part of the song on the CMT website CLICK HERE.
“When I saw the movie for the first time, I knew that this had to be a special song.,” said Robert Deaton, the song producer on Vince Gill’s website. “It could not be a love song in the traditional sense, because the Warners’ story is so much more than that,” adding that he wanted to keep the focus on the story of Kurt and Brenda. “I hope the song can connect to other people and relate to them in their own life and realize that Love Changes Everything.”
