TOUCHDOWN!!!!!

Rating: Null/10 (29 September 2000)

By looking at REMEMBER THE TITANS you are probably saying "oh geeze, another football movie. How can this one be any better than the last one? The only good recent football film is RUDY." Well, after seeing this film, you'll be taken by surprise, just like I was.
In 1971, in Alexandria, Virginia, the town's high school football team, the T.C. Williams Titans, are very popular. T.C. Williams High School current football coach, Coach Yoast (Will Patton), is nominated for high school Hall of Fame. But a few weeks before the start of the school year, a white store owner shoots and kills a black man who was suspected in stealing a product. This causes a racial seperation between blacks and whites in Alexandria. Then just before the start of the football season, Coach Yoast gets demoted to Assistant Coach in place of Coach Boone (Denzel Washington). What's bad is that Boone is black, and Yoast is white. Most of the town's residents are angry, and even some of the players are willing to ruin their football career's to quit the team to make a statement. But at the start of football camp, Coach Boone won't take any racial diversity. Boone treats all of his players equally, he has his football camp practices appear to be a mixture between boot camp and group sessions. If the player misses catching a football, he has to run a mile. If the player doesn't know anything about the person of the opposite color that they are rooming with, they have homework to get to know one another. With this, it creates a special bond between these men. Men who act more mature and humane, unlike most of the residents of Alexandria. But when Coach Boone and Coach Yoast prove that the Titans are a winning team, the issue of race is erased and the true meaning of teamwork is born.
The way to make a great sports movie is to have it be adapted from a true life story. Like PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, HOOSIERS, and RUDY, all are films that show that what appears to be a sport, is the true triumph of the human spirit. I really did enjoy the characters in the film, since they are factual, they have very humanistic qualities. While one loves to hum "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," another gets excited while listening to "Act Naturally." And although you can guess what happens in the end, you don't care. You enjoy and like the character's so much that you are cheering for them.
I highly enjoyed the acting in this film. I think if Denzel Washington should get his long overdue Oscar for Best Actor, it should be for this film. He teaches his team that black or white, these men are a team, and that the only way to win is teamwork. Washington gives a bravura performance, that it will stun the people who think that Washington usually plays "racist" roles. I also enjoyed Will Patton a lot, he's not playing the cliche coach who gets demoted, and wants to ruin the new head coach. Instead, he understands the message that Boone is giving to the team that he helps as much as he can to help the team succeed. I thought Patton's role is the best assistant coach role that I have seen since Dennis Hopper's role in HOOSERS. And the football players are also great, the ones I thought stood out were: Preston Brant (Jerry Buck, the team's captain), Donald Adensun (Petey, the team's running-back), Kip Perdue (Sunshine, the team's quarterback), Craig Kirkwood (Rev, the team's defense player), and Ethan Suplee (Lastik, the team's leading defense, and by his size, he should be!) I was glad to see Suplee change his roles in his career. The last time I remember seeing him, he was the vicious skinhead along with Edward Norton and Patrick Furlong in AMERICAN HISTORY X. In REMEMBER THE TITANS, he's the exact opposite, he's the first white player who makes friends with the black players!!!
Director Boaz Yakin and producer Jerry Bruckheimer should be commended for this film.
I am pleased to see Jerry Bruckheimer made a really enjoyable and intellectual film, which is the complete opposite of the type of films that he's famous for. In fact I think this is the first one intellectual film Bruckheimer has made! The message that it sends out is really powerful, and if it doesn't convince you to change, then you are probably dead. And director Boaz Yakin does a fantastic job with this film, that along with Cameron Crowe, Wolfgang Petersen, and Ridley Scott, he should be nominated best director.
This is quite a film, in fact, I think this is the best football movie that I have ever seen! I really really enjoyed this film, and as I left it led me to believe in the message that this film was sending to it's audience. And this being only "PG" and put out by Walt Disney Pictures, I would love to see both junior high schools and high schools to show this film to it's students. If they did, then chances are, the violence in schools will go down. And it took Jerry Bruckheimer, Boaz Yakin, and Walt Disney Pictures to do it. Great job guys! Don't miss this enjoyable film! ***** (out of five)