A few hours before the film about his life, “Unstoppable,” was to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Anthony Robles, sitting alongside the actor who plays him, Jharrel Jerome, was remembering the moment he won the NCAA wrestling national title. He had done something that was, by any measure, extraordinary. Robles was born without his right leg.
Through grit and determination, Robles had risen to be the best 125-pound wrestler in the country. But the last thing on his mind at that moment was Hollywood. “I was sitting there showering off after the match,” Robles says.
“I was excited and then I was like, ‘I gotta find a job. I gotta start getting my resume together.' I never got into any of this for the attention.
” “Unstoppable,” which premiered Friday night in Toronto, was one of the most-anticipated premieres of the festival partly because of outside drama. The film is produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and co-stars Jennifer Lopez as Robles’ mom, Judy. But if all the talk going in was about who would turn up between Affleck and Lopez (Lopez did), the talk after the movie belonged to Robles and Jerome.
The film, directed by the Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (“Argo,” “Heat”) and which Amazon MGM will release in December, is in many ways a conventional sports drama, with an uplifting message and terrific supporting performances from Lopez, Don Cheadle, Michael Peña and Bobby Cannavale. But it also, rather than building.