How are your New Year’s fitness goals going? If you are flagging, perhaps The Boys in the Boat, in cinemas 12 January, could provide a jolt of much-needed inspiration. The sports drama, George Clooney’s latest directing effort, is a stately, handsome affair.
It is also based on a true story (you know it is true because if it were a piece of fiction, it would be deemed unbelievable): a rag-tag team of rowers from University of Washington who win national races and proceed to represent America at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. What makes the story even better is that these students were not trust fund brats born with rowing machines in their garage but mostly working class students who had not rowed before. The film’s lead character, Joe Rantz (played by Callum Turner), is effectively an orphan who only starts the sport because it is a paid gig at college. At a London hotel, Clooney and Turner talked through the underdog story with Esquire, from a gruelling training period to the secrets of a heart-racing racing scen