25 best sports movies, ranked by the dust in your eye

12. The Hurricane (1999)

Directed by Norman Jewison
Starring Denzel Washington, John Hannah, Deborah Kara Unger

Although not universally true, most sports movies that manage to evoke powerful emotional reactions build to big moments happen during act breaks. The Hurricane builds to an incredibly stirring climax, but it’s filled with half a dozen small moments that are almost as hard-hitting. This is because the film is not a story of an athlete overcoming the odds due to determination, luck or perseverance but rather it’s the tale of a man enduring something more arduous than any competition.

The film’s eponymous lead character is Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter (Washington), a middleweight boxer who had world championship potential in the 1960s. Tragically, his career was derailed when he was accused and convicted of a triple murder he did not commit. Though eventually exonerated, Carter spent nearly 20 years behind bars trying to get his case reopened.

Admittedly, The Hurricane is really only a sports movie in the traditional sense for its opening section. The fact that Carter was a boxer of incredible potential quickly becomes largely immaterial once he becomes incarcerated. But the film makes it clear that the mental toughness that allowed Carter to stand toe to toe with some of the best fighters of his generation informed his time in prison.

In fact, one of the film’s big moments makes that link clear. After a devastating legal setback, Carter asks his most ardent supporters to break off contact. In his assessment, the only way to endure a triple life sentence is to forsake all human connections. Thankfully, Carter did not live the rest of his life in a cell. But the fact that his experiences brought him to such a point of total despair makes the film one of most heartrending sports movies ever made.