Roger Ebert once said that the surest script for success in Hollywood would be the underdog sports drama. Pick a sport that hasn’t been done yet, like lacrosse or water polo, get a bunch of misfits with the requisite minority representative sample, maybe throw in a tomboy, add a coach seeking redemption, and have a big game finale where the favored opponents, dressed in black, are defeated at the buzzer with a game-winning point. He was criticizing The Mighty Ducks, but it’s amazing how many sports movies are built ground-up, with no trace of irony, on those conventions entirely. Don’t forget the inspirational speech about it “not mattering who wins or loses, but how you play the game.” Ouch. Sad but true, Mr. Ebert.

Despite this formula, many films have transcended to become classic and unforgettable films. Remember Hoosiers? How about The Bad News Bears? Miracle? Another way to avoid the cliché is to ignore the ragtag-band trope and make the sports film a character study about an individual. Rocky? Rudy? The Natural? Invincible? The Rookie? It goes on and on. One person’s story of triumph is all the more personal for a viewer. And battles in real life have a gray area between winners and losers. Sports don’t.

The best kinds of sports movies are the ones that look at sports in context of the world around them, how the love of a game can save people from being forgotten, how nobodies can become champions, how the purity of sport can transcend racism or poverty, the clash of nations and ideologies. The upcoming film Invictus promises this microcosmic view, and Chariots of Fire did it quite well. And Remember the Titans is one of the greatest football films of all time, while also a time capsule into integrating school in the post-civil rights South.

John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side is one of those movies. It’s a true story, inspired by Baltimore Ravens’ current offensive lineman Michael Oher (admirably portrayed as a gentle-giant teenager by Quinton Aaron). Oher, through a combination of fortune and goodwill, escaped a life of dangerous anonymity in a neighborhood curiously titled Hurt Village in uptown Memphis to begin attending Wingate Christian Academy. In the film, Oher’s grades are so poor he can’t play any sports. His teachers don’t know what to do with him, as he doesn’t learn in any traditional manner. He owns one extra T-shirt that he carries around in a plastic bag, and roams around the town without anyplace to return and call “home.”

Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock, in arguably her greatest dramatic role to date) wouldn’t stand for it. She and her husband Sean (an almost unrecognizable Tim McGraw) find “big Mike” roaming around town in the cold and invite him to their house, no questions asked. The film becomes the typical redemptive tale of the Tuohys taking Oher in and integrating him into their family, a teenage girl named Collins (Lily Collins, as in, daughter of singer Phil) and an elementary-age son, Sean Jr. (S.J. for short, played by Jae Head). Oher gets a private tutor (Oscar-winning Kathy Bates, Misery, The Waterboy) grades improve, he goes out for the high school team, and the Tuohy family helps him develop his social skills, his football skills, and their family grows tighter as a result. Oher is gigantic, and once he harnesses his protective instincts to become a dominator on the field, the college scouts come knocking. Small-town boy does good, happy ending right?

Wrong. And here the film is rewarding. It isn’t content with the down-pat rags-to-riches underdog formula the true story pretty much provides it. There is the looming specter of race. Why does a rich white family take a disenfranchised black kid under their wing? Is it “white guilt” or charity? Leigh Anne’s friends at the country club think so, and loudly. What about the rumors at school about Collins and her six-foot-plus new roommate? What about Oher’s “friends,” the local riffraff in Hurt Village? How will they react to Oher’s “white flight?”

The movie doesn’t dwell in human ugliness, but the rough edges of Oher’s unusual circumstances peek through. We see his sordid “home” life, his neighborhood gangs, his estrangement form his family, traumatic flashbacks to his social service childhood, his vagrant lifestyle. The movie has a third act, when so few seem to anymore. Oher wouldn’t just get into college and score a happy ending without someone raising an eyebrow at the politics behind it.

Sandra Bullock doesn’t play Leigh Anne as a movie mom. This is a woman who alternates maternal instincts with go-getter brutality. She’s as smart as she is beautiful, and her assessment of Oher’s strengths and weaknesses allow her to dispense perfect advice to him at football practice: “When you see the quarterback, think of me. Protect your family.” And we find ourselves a formidable football player.

This is a movie about moments: When Collins sits with Oher in the school library to study, and responds to everyone’s suspicion and confusion with a curt, pragmatic understatement before carrying on with her studies. When Oher accidentally brings the Tuohys together for Thanksgiving. When Leigh Anne and Oher go shopping the first time. When Oher and S.J. get in a car accident, and Leigh Anne handles the shock with compassion and understanding. When Leigh Anne meets Oher’s birthmother, living in squalor and suffering from addiction. The two women negotiate the future of their son with quiet strength. That’s love.

And the football scenes aren’t overlong or cut like music videos. They focus on Michael Oher, and the complexity of a large man with a gentle spirit engaging effectively in such a ruthless sport.

Sure, it’s cliché, like 95% of mainstream sports movies, but that doesn’t drag it down. It’s a film you’ll find yourself wanting to like more than you do, while simultaneously liking it more than you wanted to or thought you would.