Movies: MLK Day Integrated Football Double Feature

To commemorate Martin Luther King Day, Shangrila Towers will be featuring two football movies that mix the tropes of Inspiring Sports Story with the tropes of Inspiring Racial Tolerance Story. While other sports have the same kinds of movies ("Glory Road," "Invictus," etc.), racial prejudice is one of the nastiest, most visceral forms of discrimination, and it dovetails well with rough-and-tumble action on the American gridiron.

The Express: The Ernie Davis Story



"The Express" tells the story of Syracuse All-American running back Ernie Davis (played by Rob Brown), who became the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner in 1961. In that regard, it's a pretty conventional biopic, starting off with Davis as a young boy facing racism in Pennsylvania and running all the way through to the Orangemen's national championship season. If you're at all familiar with Ernie Davis' life, you'll see the bittersweet dénouement coming, though this is where Brown's performance shines the most. Dennis Quaid also has a key role as Ben Schwartzwalder, Syracuse's head coach.

Despite the generally competent acting, the movie loses a lot of points during the actual football games. If you're a West Virginia Mountaineer or Texas Longhorn fan, you'll probably take issue with the portrayals of their racist players mercilessly beating up Ernie Davis between plays (someone in the movie actually knees him, WWE SmackDown!-style). It borders on libel, but, since this is a sports movie and not a documentary, I suppose director Gary Fleder can get away with it.

Rating: 5/10

Remember the Titans



This is one of the highest-grossing football movies ever, mostly due to the megawatt star power of Denzel Washington. He plays Herman Boone, head coach of the recently-desegregated T.C. Williams High School, who has to manage racial tensions both within the community and on the team. The stakes are high - if Boone loses one game, he gets fired.

Some of the details were fictionalized (okay, maybe most of them), but the movie holds up okay thanks to a great ensemble cast of young actors, who really sell the predictable-yet-heartfelt bonding the team undergoes through the season. Plus, along with "Stepmom," the movie features one of the best uses of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" in film.

Rating: 7/10