WINNING IN BLACK AND WHITE
REMEMBER THE TITANS
Directed by Boaz Yakin
Screenplay by Gregory Allen Howard
With Denzel Washington, Will Patton
UA North PG 113 min
Sports movies, with their clearly definable elements of winning and losing, lay out a simple blueprint for our emotions. We identify with the protagonist, and then cheer when he wins. It's fun, it's easy, and anyone can play.
There's all of that in Remember the Titans, a visceral football movie based on the true story of the forced integration of an Alexandria, Va. High school in 1971. It's a feel-good, feel-bad, feel-good roller coaster ride, replete with the familiar signposts of the genre. But it's not really about football. It's about race relations, and there are plenty of familiar signposts from that route as well. What is surprising, then, is what a terrific movie it turns out to be.
How accurate it is we can only guess. But Alexandria's T.C. Williams High School was integrated in the fall of 1971, and its popular white football coach was replaced with a black man. Coach Yoast (Will Patton) agreed to stay on as an assistant under Coach Boone (Denzel Washington), a decision which may have been motivated by an understanding that the minute Boone stumbled, the Board would kick him out on his unpopular black ass. The movie isn't clear whether Yoast is in on this this from the start, but it's not far from everyone's mind.
Boone is not a man who requires any such motivation to succeed. He's a tough leader who demands perfection from everyone, black and white, with the tyranny of a marine drill sergeant. And he understands that a football team beset by racial division is a losing football team. So his away-from-home preseason camp is devoted to forcing his black and white players to accept each other as much as it is to teaching football and fitness. A highlight is a brutal predawn run through the woods which ends in the early morning mists of the battlefield at Gettysburgh, where the coach delivers a moving inspirational speech.
Bonding a bunch of kids with a common goal is one thing. Translating it to the community is another. Virginia in the early seventies was a place with a deep-seated perspective on the mixing of races; back from camp and in the real world, the integrated Titans have to test their hard-earned brotherhood in the fires of the bigotry of their families and friends.
Success is measured the old-fashioned way, one perfect season at a time. One wonders what the effect of a few tough losses would have been on the history of integration in Northern Virginia. But this is a movie, and there are certain conventions to be followed. I don't mind a movie that pushes my buttons if it pushes them well, and this pushes them like E. Power Biggs hitting the stops on a church organ.
There's plenty of credit to go around, starting with another commanding performance by Washington and a smart, tough assist from Patton and a likable cast of young actor/athletes. And it would be a crime not to single out young Hayden Panettiere as Yoast's pint-sized, football-obsessed daughter. Pulling the strings masterfully are screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard and director Boaz Yakin (Fresh). And don't forget producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who finally hits after two duds this year, a record that would have had him out on his white ass if he'd been coaching the Titans.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews