Trailer
Plot summary
Matt Hamill is born deaf, and the people around him as he grows up can hear. He takes up wrestling, and in 1997 he joins the Rochester Institute of Technology team as a sophomore walk-on. Purdue coach Pruitt cuts him from the team. His deafness makes him an outsider among hearing classmates, and in the Deaf community he is an outsider too. He uses what others perceive as a disability to his own advantage. His grandfather is Stanley, his girlfriend is Kristi and his roommate is Jay. No deaf wrestler has won a national collegiate championship, and that is the mark he pursues.
Cast
- Eben Kostbaras Coach Cantrell
- Stephen Doddas Coach Rich
- Theodore Conleyas Young Matt Hamill
Show all 15 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hammer (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Kostbar was originally intended to play Hamill, but they decided to cast a deaf person as the wrestler to appeal to the deaf community. They first noticed Harvard in his brief role in There Will Be Blood, as the adult son of Daniel Day-Lewis's character.
- One of Hamill's former opponents, Rich Franklin, appears in the film as Purdue University wrestling coach Pruitt, the man who cuts Hamill from the team.
- According to McKelheer, the writers performed "roughly" 75 rewrites of the script, to ensure Hamill's support and to make sure that the film would not be cheesy.
- The Hammer, titled Hamill at the time, had its world premiere at the AFI Film Festival in November 2010, where it won a Breakthrough Film Audience Award and a $5,500 prize.
- For the production the filmmakers sought financing and found it with Fifth Year Productions, a company founded by the Farrelly brothers, Jim Kelly and Bob Bartosiewicz.
