Doesn't offer much we haven't seen or heard before, but I'm a bit of a sucker for these sort of films so I liked it

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2020)

African-American football coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) is appointed head coach of a Virginian high school team. His appointment initially causes friction as he is set to replace their current coach the highly respected and decorated coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton). However, his appointment has farther reaching implications when Boone insists on integrating black and white members in to his team in a school and area that are deeply hostile towards black people...
Remember The Titans is about as predictable as they come and it's fair to say that there are no real risks taken in the narrative (everything plays out more-or-less as you'd expect). However, it's a Disney film and its main purpose is to uplift and in this respect it achieves its goal.
Denzel Washington is a key ingredient to the film's success; his performance here as firm, but fair coach Herman Boone was superb and some of his pep talks and speeches were very amusing. Whilst this is perhaps not Washington's best performance I would certainly put it up there as one of his best.
Although the narrative is predictable, Remember The Titans is a very well-directed film. It's a well-paced film whereby the first half of the film sees the majority of the team harbouring animosity towards those of the opposite skin colour whilst a slow-burning bond also starts to develop amongst them as a unit. This in itself provides for some amusing exchanges (particularly in the way some of them overcome their natural prejudices). The second half of the film focuses more on the team's gradual ascent to the top in which they ultimately play that 'final game.' By this stage they have mostly overcome their differences and begin to focus on winning the Championship. In some ways the second half isn't quite as strong as it mostly focuses on the ball games for about an hour and sadly a rinse and repeat approach is mostly used (the only thing to separate them is that there seems to be incidents created involving different players). It's all still quite good, just a little less impacting than the first half.
For what it is and what it does, Remember The Titans does work; it's uplifting, inspiring whilst also raising awareness on the pointlessness of bigotry and racial hatred (yes we've seen it all before, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded now and again). Remember The Titans is a message film so it's only natural that it gets a bit preachy (it does but thankfully not often and not in a way that it hurts the overall quality of the film). It's definitely worth a look particularly, if like me, you're a sucker for these type of films.