Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Standard’ on Hulu, a Documentary Chronicling One of the Most Grueling Athletic Challenges on Earth

Now on Hulu, The Standard is a documentary about what’s likely the world’s most mentally and physically grueling endurance challenge, and not just because it takes place in Florida (rimshot?). Director Phil Wall put his camera on the Goruck Selection, a 48-hour event designed by Special Forces veterans — a.k.a. Green Berets — and based on the 24-day training program they went through to become elite Army soldiers. As you may expect, the Selection isn’t a tiptoe through the tulips; in fact, it may make a headfirst dive into an active volcano look like a Disney vacation. The question here is whether or not watching human beings voluntarily undergo this challenge makes for an inspiring or horrifying documentary.

THE STANDARD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Let’s start with the numbers: Seventy-four people signed up for Class 019 of the Goruck Selection, and 45 actually showed up. A scant few hours in, the number drops from 21 to 15 to 11. Soon there will be four, and then two. Will one of them be among the tiny select few who’ve ever completed the event? It consists of what laypeople might call “torture”: Participants wear 100-lb. backpacks — something known as “rucking,” which looks about as fun as it sounds and isn’t nearly as fun as the thing it rhymes with — while crawling and slogging through mud, hauling and tossing sandbags, flipping logs end-over-end, etc., all with no food or sleep. We’ll eventually learn that there’s a rest period at the 24-hour mark, which might actually be worse than not having a rest at all, and is just another piece of the challenge.

The sadistic types who concocted the Selection are known as “cadre,” who verbally berate participants throughout the challenge, and probably have portraits of R. Lee Ermey tacked up on the ceilings of their bedrooms. They even talk about how they figure out a participant’s psychological sore spot and keep jabbing at it. So yes, this is one of those if-you’re-not-winning-then-you’re-losing type of things — you know, if you’re no. 2, then you’re obviously shit. Interestingly, as soon as a participant taps out, the cadre guys turn from insult-flingers to sweethearts full of supportive compliments, Hyde-to-Jekyll style. They’ll tear you down and build you back up, and it’s all part of the grand military tradition.

We watch as the Funtime Selectioneers endure excruciating agony for what seems like forever, their faces filthy and contorted into near-death rictuses, then we see a brutal subtitle: HOUR 11. Only 37 more to go! There’s no point in getting to know anyone but the two crazy MFers who make it through a very, very grim duckwalking competition to get to the 80-lb. sandbag portion and the lugging-concrete-blocks-for-no-f—-ing-reason segment: Contestant 028, Jonathan Hurtado, a video game developer from San Francisco; and Mr. 062, Alexander Stavdal, a tech guy from Brooklyn. They will hereby be known as two-eight and six-two, and I’m pretty sure those aren’t smiles on their faces, but pain-grimaces. Cadre dudes pause the browbeating for a minute to ask how they’re doing, and two-eight is honest and says he’s not great, and six-two lies and says he’s just terrific at 100 percent. Which approach gets you to the end? NO SPOILERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I can’t imagine ever being enough of a maniac to take on the Standard, but the equivalent test of a movie critic’s endurance would be non-stop screenings of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies with no food or water and only two diapers.

Performance Worth Watching: I kind of wanted to give poor two-eight a hug and tell him he’s a perfectly terrific human being whether he finishes this bull-honky event or not.

Memorable Dialogue: A few cadre gems:

“You’re either quitting or you’re working.”

“Go to your happy place there, Gilmore.”

We hear a crazy noise in the background while a competitor flails in 12 feet of lake water at night: “That’s just an alligator eating that bird, don’t worry about it.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I dare say The Standard comes reasonably close to showing us the human capacity for endurance — and possibly cruelty too, although it doesn’t take the Marquis de Sade’s imagination to come up with worse ways of testing someone’s will to succeed, most of them surely immoral and/or illegal. That’s not to say what Goruck’s founders came up with isn’t godforsaken as all hell; by the time the Selection hits day two, those still (barely) standing are so rubbery, they can barely lift a six-inch twig. And then one of the final challenges is simply walking. For eight hours. While performing no task beyond trying to NOT let your brain recognize how much pain your body is in. It’s sick, bruh. SICK. The participants’ struggles become almost perversely comic, which is easy to say while sitting on the couch with a blankie and a box of Extra Toasty Cheez-its.

Wall’s directorial approach is relatively simple: Capture what’s happening, give glimpses into the minds of participants and cadre and edit down footage of the highly repetitive Selection challenges while still getting across how numbing they are. It works for the most part, compelling our interest in two-eight and six-two’s capacities to endure; some of us might feel a little rah-rah for them, less for the thrill of victory, more for the compassionate release of seeing them get it all the hell over with, finish the course (or not! It’s perfectly OK if a person fails!) and take a hard-earned nap. Imagine how good a pillow would feel for these guys. Maybe that’s the point: Extremity and chaos exist to make us appreciate relative calm and luxury.

The cadre discuss how the Selection is essentially a tribute to military veterans, allowing “civilians” to experience what some people sacrifice for their country, which was likely far worse; it’s a reasonably convincing argument, although nobody gets into specifics, and simply state that the vets who work for Goruck know what it’s like to live through such grueling mental and physical challenges, and leaves it at that. The film also doesn’t address whether those who complete the challenge feel elation, or PTSD, or both; escaping unchanged (unscathed?) sure seems likely. It could use a little more science to back the cadre’s assertions that the Selection is more about psychological endurance than anything else, which seems to contradict later discussions as to whether one of the participants can “medically” continue. “There’s a lot of Americans out there who want a little slice of knowledge… (about) what kind of a human does this to themselves,” Goruck founder and CEO Jason McCarthy says. The film certainly gives us that little slice.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Standard might’ve been more resonant if it went deeper into the psychological grit of military service, but purely as a gawk-at-the-feats-of-athleticism doc with the occasional WTF moment, it’s pretty fascinating.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch The Standard on Hulu