Two lacrosse stars from feuding families discover honor isn't what their parents sold them.
"The Attackman" refers to the players on a Lacrosse team positioned to score the most points in this aggressive sport. And Lacrosse means everything to Jordan Simms and Chris Wheatley, two high-school seniors from different religious traditions who come to realize, as a life-changing game nears, that their parents' values aren't the same as their own.
Acting
Bell and Combs bring heavyweight presence to a short.
Direction
Straus packs a feature's worth of stakes into 17 minutes.
Writing
Dialogue that trusts silence and subtext over exposition.
Director
Topher Straus
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Topher Straus made this as a USC thesis film before pivoting to video games and documentary work—this remains his only narrative feature credit.
The film quietly codes Jordan as Jewish and Chris as Christian without explicit labels, letting lacrosse culture's quasi-religious intensity do the thematic heavy lifting.
US
