Wrestle

The intimacy that Herbert attains with the kids and the respect that she affords them prevents the film from ever seeming exploitative of their lives and hardships and rather gives it a thorough sense of empathy.

Just as sports mirror society, so do the best sports films not only take us inside games and those who play them but also provide insight into our world and how it works. “Wrestle,” a superb sports documentary, does exactly that.

Wrestle isn’t slick or impartial, and doesn’t claim to be, yet the movie has a raw honesty that disdains forced uplift.

The first feature-length doc by Suzannah Herbert, it is smartly focused, offering nothing to distract from the stories it is able to fit within its running time.

Suspenseful as the actual matches are, there’s more tension in worrying just how intact these near-adults will make it to the even bigger stakes of post-high-school life, or whether they’ll be hobbled before they even leave the gate.

It’s a revealing film that doesn’t skimp on the pitfalls facing the four young men who are its subjects and the blind spots of the white coach who pushes, inspires and badgers them through a long, grueling season.

The documentary shines a piercing light on the sorts of people that our governments would too often rather forget.