Good job by everyone, especially Denzel Washington; exciting and inspirational

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2003)

At the beginning and the end of the movie (but not in between), Sheryl as an adult is narrating. A funeral is taking place in the early 1980s. Then the movie goes back to 1971, where people in the Washington, D. C., suburb of Alexandria are rioting because a white business owner has killed a black teenager. If that's not bad enough, two of the schools have been combined to form the city's first integrated high school and the people are very upset about that. Coach Yoast, who has been very successful in the football program at the white school, does not like having Herman Boone, who is black, hired as an assistant coach. Unfortunately, things get worse. Coach Boone is named the head football coach because the area has no black head coaches. The white players do not want to play for anyone except Coach Yoast. Unfortunately, if they don't play where they are assigned, they don't play without paying a lot of money to go somewhere else. Eventually, the nearly all-black football team gets its white players back, and Coach Yoast returns as an assistant.
Coach Boone runs training camp like boot camp. He expects nothing less than perfection, and he expects the players to get along despite their racial differences. Eventually, the team must return to the 'real world', where the people need lessons in tolerance. It's an exciting football season, and the team has its ups and downs. When I saw it, this was a 'Wonderful World of Disney' movie (with additional footage not shown in theaters or even on DVD), though not as clean as most, and you pretty much know what to expect. This movie is based on a real story, though, so you don't know exactly how the Disney formula will work in this case.
Denzel Washington did a wonderful job. His character showed no fear and stood up to all obstacles that came his way. Yet he still managed to show a tender side when it was appropriate. Hayden Panettiere gave the other standout performance, as Coach Yoast's 9-year-old daughter Sheryl, who knew almost as much as her father about football. I thought pretty much everyone gave a good performance. The movie was a little on the long side, and it did contain some offensive terms used by those who hate people just because of their race. There were also a couple of suggestions of homosexuality. However, there was little violence except on the football field. And even there, it was mostly the usual for football.
There was some comedy. In addition to Sheryl's precocious behavior, there were lots of great moments where players were learning about each other. Such as when one black player was forced to listen to Buck Owens.

This movie showed a football team and a town that had more than the usual obstacles to overcome, and in many ways the people in this movie showed us all that some things can be done which seem impossible.