For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
In the new fantasy sports film Touchback, former high school football champ Scott Murphy gets a second chance to go back in time and change his fate.
Brian Presley, himself a former high school quarterback who really was on his state championship winning football team, plays Murphy, the high school football star who appears to have everything – adoration from those around him, the blonde cheerleader girlfriend, and the potential for a great future at
Touchback spends the first twenty minutes or so setting up how poorly Murphy is doing. The farm is in trouble, the crops have frozen, and with little money coming in, the bank has already begun foreclosure proceedings. Murphy feels his family would be better off if he was dead, so, like George Bailey, Murphy decides to end it all. But the suicide fails. Instead, Murphy wakes up only to find that he has returned to the week of the big game. No, it’s not a dream; he really has returned. He’s a high school jock again, and now, armed with the knowledge of what his future could be, he has the ability to change the ending of the game, save his leg and enjoy the future he was always supposed to have.
Unlike George Bailey, or even Ebenezer Scrooge for that matter, Murphy has no guardian angel called Clarence or a Ghost of Christmas Past to guide him and explain what’s happening, he simply wakes up and there he is, back at high school. The film does nothing to explain how Murphy experiences this time traveling trick or what it is that makes him return to present time, it just happens and we have to accept it.
The casting is generally good. Even though he doesn’t appear to age, other than an unshaven face in later life, Brian Presley makes a convincing high school jock as well as a farmer. New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey has a charming appeal as Murphy’s wife, Lacy, and Kurt Russell is perfectly fine as the coach, though his wrinkled, old age makeup for the present day scenes appear over the top, especially considering that most other characters from their high-school days look practically the same no matter what time period they’re in. From the caked look, Russell appears to be in his own time zone racing towards old age much faster than everyone around him.
It’s an old plot, and Touchback has nothing new or original to say about the subject, yet, like the woman Murphy eventually marries, the film has an overall pleasant demeanor. You won’t remember much about the film once you leave the theatre, but it’s harmless fun during its two hour running time.
