Remember the Titans

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2011)

Remember the Titans is a coming of age film about T. C. Williams high school's football team that has been desegregated in 1971 in a small town Virginia. The main character Herman Boone is played by Denzel Washington who is the teams new head coach. The film follows him as he fights to get him and his team accepted in the community and become a unit by looking past there race and where they came from.
Boone takes over for the old coach named Bill Yoast played by Will Patton, who has been nominated for the Virginia High School Football Hall of Fame and is going to pursue further coaching opportunities elsewhere. After the white players on the team find out the the football team will be integrated with black players and Boone will be the new head coach, some of them refuse to play. Yoast does not want to see this happen because some of the players could be missing out on college scholarships. So Boone offers Yoast an assistant job, which he takes to keep the team together.
The film also follows two players on the team, Gerry Bertier who is white and played by Ryan Hurst, and Julius Campell who is black and played by Wood Harris. These two characters at first do not like each other like the rest of the team and the town. But they are both there respective leaders of the two teams. They feud like everyone else during there training camp, but form a bond and slowly along with Boone and Yoast, bring the team together.
I would compare this movie to Glory Road, the movies are almost identical themes, except Glory Road is about basketball, and the overall message and racism is a little more hardcore.
The film had great cinematography and lighting, especially during the football game scenes. The shots are almost dark and gloomy giving a sense of attrition and an importance of something more than the game at hand. They are fighting for something more than just a win, they are playing for each other, and to show that they are the best team and not just a joke. These techniques aid into the overall them of the movie and showing them overcome there personal and social problems with each other, and the town.
Reference Boggs, J., & Petrie, D. (2008). The Art of Watching Films (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.