It's a great story. And it has the added benefit of being (mostly) true.

In 1976, at the start of his first year as the Philadelphia Eagles' head coach, Dick Vermeil issued an open call to anyone who wanted to try out for the team. Having lost the last game of the previous dismal season, 31-0, to the Cincinnati Bengals in a dreary, snowy Veterans Stadium, they had nothing left to lose, right?

Hundreds showed up. One guy made it: Vince Papale, a lifelong Eagles fan who happened to be at a crossroads at age 30, but who also happened to possess explosive athletic abilities and even greater heart.

The aptly titled Invincible is his story - or rather, it's "inspired by" his story. (The filmmakers took a few liberties, but they're acceptable.) And, like its predecessors The Rookie and Miracle, it's remarkably un-Disneyfied for a Disney movie.

Longtime cinematographer Ericson Core (The Fast and the Furious), who directs for the first time and also shot the film, and screenwriter Brad Gann take a stripped-down look at Papale's unlikely pro football career, which is surprising given the feel-good subject matter yet fitting for the setting.

In gritty tones and vivid details, Core depicts the economic hardships Papale and his friends endured in working-class South Philly in the 1970s. And in Mark Wahlberg, himself a product of a poor upbringing in South Boston, Core has the ideal star. His stoicism, physicality and tough-guy looks make him totally believable as Papale, and make it easy to root for him as the underdog.

(Core lays it on a bit thick at times, especially during a pivotal mud football game in the driving rain, and is entirely too fond of the slo-mo. But for the most part he plays the practice and game scenes in straightforward fashion and just lets us feel the ache of the crunch for ourselves.)

Papale had always been the star of the pickup games he played with his buddies in a dilapidated yard, where strategy consists of: "Let's do the one where Vince kinda runs by everyone, on one." A substitute teacher and part-time bartender, Papale himself probably didn't even realize what he was capable of - he just went out there and did what he knew how to do, instinctively.

Right around the time his teaching gig is drying up and his wife coldly leaves him, taking with her all the belongings in their cramped apartment, Vermeil puts out his call. And Greg Kinnear is an eerily good fit to play the young coach from UCLA, all blond and tanned and full of fresh spark, which makes him a natural target of ridicule for the city's hardened sports fans and writers. (At no point does anyone or anything make him cry, however.)

At the urging of his friends, Papale goes for it. And as he makes it through round after round of cuts, he finds himself emerging as an inspiration for his friends and neighbours, something he realizes while driving down the street and stopping for a little boy who's run out to retrieve a ball. The kid is wearing a makeshift No. 83 jersey - Papale's number - and in a nice touch, the young actor is Papale's real-life son.

He is one of them. His success keeps them going during their own failure. But he also runs into some resistance from jealous friends and even from his own father (Kevin Conway), who thinks Papale shouldn't have bothered trying out in the first place. ("Men can only take so much failure," is his logic. Thanks, dad!) These scenes are among the film's most poignant without trying hard to be.

And just as the guys in Eagles locker room are shunning this rookie special-teams player who's dressing beside them, Papale is tentatively embarking on a much-needed romance with the woman who eventually will become his wife. The incredibly cute, increasingly versatile Elizabeth Banks (Seabiscuit, Heights, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) co-stars as Janet, who knows more about football than most guys at the bar her cousin owns, where Papale himself served beer before he became a star.

Their relationship unfolds with about as much melodrama as nearly everything else that transpires in Invincible. Thankfully.

Three stars out of four.