Football season is upon us, which means that Hollywood is obliged to bring out another football movie. This season’s offering is Disney’s Remember The Titans.
Denzel Washington stars as a talented football coach who takes over at a newly integrated high school in Alexandria, Va., in the 1970s.
Racial tension abounds, especially when word gets out that Coach Boone (Washington) will be replacing the highly popular and successful incumbent, Coach Yoast (Will Patton, who seems to appear in every movie with producer Jerry Bruckheimers name attached).
Coach Yoast grudgingly agrees to be an assistant under Coach Boone, with an understanding with town leaders that he will re-assume control of the team if Coach Boone loses even one game.
A good deal of conflict also occurs when players, both black and white, learn they have been forced to play on the same team.
From the beginning of the movie, it is apparent that Coach Boone has the magic touch with his players and coaches. In the course of weeks, he is able to end years of racial hostility and make the Titans a football powerhouse.
As we know from a myriad other sports movies, a successful team is the cure for all of society’s ills, and the bitter racial controversy that once plagued Alexandria is eased with each Titan win.
While this may not be the way things work in reality, it certainly makes for entertaining and feel-good cinema.
Washington, one of the finest contemporary American actors, gives a powerful and emotional performance as Coach Boone. His presence gives more credibility to a decent, albeit sometimes overly sentimental, script.
Patton also turns in a good performance as Coach Yoast, who struggles with his demotion to Defensive Coordinator and his ability to work and even befriend people of a different race.
Some of the other characters, especially the Titan players, border on archetypes, but fresh performances by newcomers Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, Donald Faison and Craig Kirkwood save the characters from being cardboard stereotypes.
In many scenes, the action on the football field takes center stage, and director Boaz Yakin does a good job of delivering the intensity of the gridiron to the screen.
This movie is “based on a true story,” a phrase that is open to much speculation about the degree of truth involved.
This being a Disney movie, it would not be surprising if some of the events have been embellished a bit, to give the film a little more dramatic flair and a more exciting conclusion.
The biggest problem with this movie was the funeral scene that frames the main action of the film, because it distracts the audience from the positive overall message and encouraging tone of the movie, as well as providing a totally inappropriate moment that oddly links a popular sports anthem with the unfortunate death of a loved one.
In the end, Remember The Titans works well as a football movie and decently as a tale of tolerance.
Fine performances, led by Denzel Washington, as well as a good amount of football action make this movie enjoyable despite an occasionally syrupy plot. B