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Dir. Gary Fleder
Rating: 6.5 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Scott Hesel
There’s only so much room for innovation in the sports movie format, so if you’re going to make an attempt at the genre, it might as well feel realistic and exciting. This film succeeds on that front, with lush 1950s recreations of eastern stadiums, uniforms, and the autumnal Saturday morning college football atmosphere. The football scenes themselves really shine as well. There are no ridiculous triple reverses or improbable eighty-yard runs where the defense seemingly has thirty men on the field in order to milk the slow motion shots. Instead, Ernie Davis (Rob Brown) fights for every yard in a believable flurry of counter plays, jukes, spin moves, and good old-fashioned number-on-number clashes. As for the Civil Rights aspect of the story, its effectiveness is mixed. Dennis Quaid does an excellent job of portraying the conflicted Ben Schwartzman, who doesn’t quite know how to handle the coming tide of social unrest, as embodied by his relationships with Davis and Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson). Schwartzman’s transformation throughout the film is handled with grace, but aside from a tense game versus West Virginia, the association of Davis with the greater efforts of the Civil Rights movement seems glossed over. Of course, this is supposed to be feel-good tale with a minimum of the worst ugliness, but perhaps the more interesting story would’ve centered on Brown. The contentious scenes between him and Schwartzman in the beginning of the film foreshadow Brown’s development into the militant, outspoken leader he was known for later in his life, and also indicate that he was molded from the deep prejudice he faced as the black athlete who initially blazed the path for Davis. While this film ranks as above-average in the sports genre, perhaps the best story was left on the drawing board.
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