A story worth telling, a movie worth seeing.

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2006)

I'd like to recommend seeing this movie. It's the first movie that I've attended in a long time where at the end of the movie most of the audience broke out into spontaneous applause (a mostly white bread group, too). Stay around for the credits. While they run, you'll see pictures, footage, and interviews of the REAL people involved. Historically, pretty right on. I don't usually suggest that high school history classes "movie-fy" their history, but this gives a feeling of the racial "climate" (attitudes, some of what it felt like to live the situation -- fear, anger, pride, team support, friendship, etc) in a movie that doesn't feel as preachy as most of this genre and that younger people will find interesting and entertaining (so they'll pay attention). This happened in the 60's: PRE- Remember the Titans and at the college level instead of high school. It has many excellent performances. Yes, it makes use of some of the usual clichés in sports movies, but what's important in the movie is the story about people and events that changed the sports world (and our country) for the better. The movie wasn't trying to be an art film or change movie-making. It was trying to tell a story worth telling and I think they did it well.