traditional sports movie

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2015)

In 1965 Fort Worth, Texas, Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) coaches high school girls' basketball. He gets recruited and moves his wife Mary (Emily Deschanel) and young kids to Texas Western College in El Paso, Texas. It's a shoestrings program with no ambitions. Nobody wants to sign with the losing team until Don sees a black player named Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke). He ignores the unwritten rule of playing one at home, two on the road and three if you're losing. Don starts recruiting both blacks and whites. He insists on coaching traditional basketball. There is racial tension within and outside the team. They overcome many hurdles on their way to reach the NCAA championship.
This is the standard sports movie overcoming racial inequality. I guess that can be counted as a negative but it doesn't have to be. This is well-acted with some good characters. It can come off as cliché but all that means is that people keep telling the same story over and over again. There's a reason why storytellers keep going back to the same well. It touches something within our humanity.