By Cindy Summers –
“Unstoppable” is the inspiring true story of Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome) who dreamed of being a wrestling champion, something seeming almost impossible due to the fact that he was born with one leg. Anthony went to Mesa High School in Arizona, where he was encouraged by his coach to follow his dreams. Anthony had an unwavering spirit and by his senior year ended up taking first place in the National High School Seniors Wrestling Championships.
Anthony was offered a full scholarship at Drexel University in Philadelphia, but wanted to wrestle at one of the more well-known schools for wrestling like Iowa, Oklahoma State, and Columbia, none of which were interested in recruiting him. His coach Bobby Williams (Michael Peña) continued to advocate for Anthony with the larger schools, but none of them were interested, though got Arizona State to meet with him. Anthony spoke to Arizona State wrestling Coach Sean Charles (Don Cheadle), who told Anthony that his only option was to attend tryouts as a walk-on.
So Anthony had a difficult choice to make: move to Philadelphia and attend Drexel for free on a full scholarship or take his chances at making the team at Arizona State and pay for college on his own. A total of 55 young men came to the Arizona try-outs, and only 33 would be on the team. In order to make the Arizona team, walk-ons had to beat out wrestlers that were recruited by scouts and prove the coaches wrong by taking a place on the roster. Anthony’s leg was missing from the hip and decided as a toddler that he did not want a prosthetic, so used crutches to get around.
Anthony wasn’t given any special treatment, nor did he want any and run laps around the track along with everything else the team did during training. He regularly found creative ways to accomplish his training exercises, which often caught the eye of Coach Charles. Anthony even did an extremely difficult three mile hike up a mountain to prove that he wasn’t going to quit or not do what the rest of the wrestlers were required to do physically. At the end of tryouts, Anthony had to wrestle a teammate to win a spot on the team and his whole family was there to support him.
Anthony lost but got a spot on the ASU team his freshman year due to the coach moving his competition up to the next weight class. At home, Anthony was the oldest of five children, with his loving, supportive mother Judy (Jennifer Lopez), but an abusive father who worked as a security guard until he lost his job. His mom had a limited income so she continually went back and forth in her relationship with his dad, leaving Anthony sharing the burden of taking care of things at home.
When Anthony returned his sophomore year, he learned that despite Coach Charles’s best efforts the wrestling program lost its funding to the more popular sports programs at ASU. Coach Charles said he reached out to some other schools for some of the wrestlers, but encouraged them all to continue academically as that should be their ultimate focus. Anthony stayed in school and continued training with his sights set on returning to wrestling at ASU his junior year.
When Anthony went back to school his junior year, Coach Charles told him that several alumni decided to personally fund the wrestling program, but there would be less money and only one scholarship, which the team unanimously voted to give Anthony. At the 2010 NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships Anthony lost to Iowa State wrestler Matt McDonough in the finals, who was the national champ and had never lost a match. His senior year, Anthony went undefeated and won the 2011 NCAA National Wrestling Championship against McDonough in the finals.
Runtime: 1hr 56m
