Undefeated is a 2011 documentary feature film directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin.
It's a story of the 2009 Manassas High School football team. Manassas High is a cash-strapped, almost entirely African-American school in a run-down neighborhood of north Memphis, TN. As the veteran teachers recount, Manassas High used to routinely go 0-10 and serve as Cannon Fodder for more prosperous high school football programs.
Enter Bill Courtney. Courtney, who makes a living as the owner of a lumber business, has been volunteering as the head coach for the Manassas Tigers. Now in his sixth year without pay, Courtney, a white man, has helped build the Tigers football program up from doormat status. The documentary focuses a lot on Coach Courtney, but also pays a lot of attention to three of his players:
- O.C. Brown, a fast, powerful lineman who is believed to be college football material.
- Montrail "Money" Brown, an undersized offensive lineman who knows he is too small to play college football. But he gets good grades and is hoping to go to college anyway.
- Chavis Daniels, another lineman, a hot-tempered young man who has returned to Manassas for his junior year after spending his whole sophomore year in a juvenile prison.
Coach Courtney and all of his players hope to get Manassas to the playoffs and possibly win a playoff game for the first time in the 110-year history of the school.
Tropes:
- Big Game: The opening game of the playoffs against Westview High, with Manassas High seeking the first playoff win in the 100-year history of their school.
- Disappeared Dad: Discussed Trope. A talk with the boys that make up the Manassas team reveals that most of them are missing one or both parents. O.C. lives with his grandmother; Money's father died when Money was 13. Coach Courtney then reveals that he too went without a father, his own dad having walked out on the family when Bill was four.
- Inner City School: Manassas High. The film makes perfectly clear that Manassas is in a dirt-poor neighborhood of north Memphis. Talking heads explain that while the school actually has gotten some funding, all of it went to the academic side, leaving athletics and the football team in particular scrounging for money.
- The Ken Burns Effect: Used with most of the still photos, like when Bill Courtney is talking about the story of his life, or when photos are used to recount the unimpressive past history of the Manassas football program.
- Lens Flare: The lens flare from the stadium lighting makes things more dramatic as Manassas plays its regular season finale against Kingsbury, with the playoffs on the line.
- Non-Indicative Name: Played with. Manassas does not go undefeated—they lose their first game, in fact. The title instead is an allusion to a refusal to give up in the face of adversity.
- Orbital Shot: The camera does a full circle around Coach Courtney and O.C. Brown as the two of them embrace after the season ends with a disappointing 28-27 loss to Westfield.
- Scenery Gorn: An entire sequence has the camera going down desolate, abandoned areas of north Memphis, showing empty house after empty house after empty house, boarded up, crumbling. The talking heads explain that there once was a Firestone plant but that after the plant closed down, the local economy collapsed.
- Stock Footage: Old game footage of O.C. Brown basically pushing smaller players around all over the football field.
- Talking Heads: Many. Coach Courtney is the most frequently seen. Montrail and O.C. both talk to the camera, as does Bill Courtney's wife, the Manassas principal, another teacher, and a couple of assistant coaches.
- Video Credits: The Video Credits reveal that Chavis was the Manassas defensive captain the next year, Money did go to college where he was a manager for the football team, O.C. played college football for Southern Mississippi, and Coach Courtney coached his kids's school the next year, with his first game coming against Manassas.
