Movie Reviews
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, September 22, 2001
by Ron Weiskind
Made here, ‘Reversal’ wrestles with pressures of sport
The independent movie “Reversal,” shot last year in Washington County and playing at the Hollywood Theaters at Crown Center in Washington, undoubtedly owes much of its emotional depth and verisimilitude to the ability of its writer and star, James Petulla, to translate his own experiences as a high school wrestling champion to the screen.
Petulla plays Edward Leone, a high-school wrestling coach who has been pushing his teen-age son, Leo (Danny Mousetis), in the sport for most of the boy’s life. Growing up in a small coal town in Western Pennsylvania, Edward never got to go to college. He ended up working in the mines and stuck in a loveless marriage.
He knows that Leo’s only hope of escaping the same fate is for the boy to win a college wrestling scholarship. But he pushes too hard, especially now that Leo has reached adolescence and found a girlfriend, Shaw (Kelly Boone), who makes him start questioning what he really wants in life.
Is it really worth the torture of making weight — starving yourself, throwing up, working out endlessly? Leo may be endangering his health and even his life for a dream that he realizes may not be as important as his growing attraction for Shaw.
By the film’s end, we learn more about the harsh cruelties in Edward’s background and watch as life deals additional blows to the characters. It is surprising to find such darkness in a movie of this scope, but it feels credible. Petulla based the film on his own life growing up in Oil City.
Petulla and Vint offer two great performances in the movie. Mousetis, a Washington High School student who represents the third generation of WPIAL wrestling champions in his family, especially is strong in the physical scenes.
Director Alan Vint makes the most of his locations, contrasting the beauty of the countryside with the stark reality of life in a coal town.
This coming-of-age story fits into a familiar genre of sports films about youngsters being pushed too hard to succeed as a way of fulfilling larger dreams: the football film “All The Right Moves” and the basketball movie “One On One” come to mind. But the distinct venue and subculture of “Reversal,” filtered through the experiences of its writers and many of its performers, work to its benefit.
