Boys can be creatures of sheer wonder. That's the takeaway conviction after watching "Des Toutes Nos Forces (released in English as "The Finishers"). By boys, I mean young (or young at heart) men with pure minds and high ideals, willing to push themselves to the utmost limits to reach a goal that has nothing to do with profit, sex or survival. And when they're in that zone, it seems — thanks to God, fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it — that everything and everyone is on their side.
"The Finishers" is the story of a father and son who compete in an Ironman Triathlon: an almost 4-km swim, 180-km bike ride and 42-km marathon. But the son is in a wheelchair, and his father must pull him along, every grueling step of the way.
The toughest men on the face of the Earth compete in Ironman races, but it takes a different kind of mindset to tow along a physically disabled 17-year-old. At first Paul (Jacques Gamblin) gives a definite "No" when his estranged son Julien (Fabien Heraud) asks him to join in the endeavor. Up to this point, Paul has been an absent father sending money back home while working far away for months at a time, leaving Julien in the capable hands of his wife Claire (Alexandra Lamy). For Paul, it was easy to stay away knowing that Julien was going to a special school and getting maternal love at home.