Titans Rule

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2009)

Although Remember The Titans is based on a true story from Northern Virginia in 1971, I couldn't help feeling that I had seen this story before. Then I remembered that a short time before the incidents on which this film is based occurred, there was a film made called Tic Tic Tic. This also involved a southern town growing out of the old days and into the new ones with the post Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. In that film a new black sheriff played by Jim Brown is elected in a southern town and he asks the former sheriff George Kennedy to stay on as his deputy to help ease the tensions.
When the folks who were making Tic Tic Tic happen on the big screen, how could they have known that life was imitating their art. This northern Virginia town was being integrated, black people were now voting, the schools and businesses were being integrated, the city fathers had to take into account a whole new population with the franchise.
Successful football coach Will Patton is asked to step aside for Denzel Washington, newly arrived from North Carolina. Patton agrees to stay on as his defensive assistant coach to help the team and not incidentally the town. Because of the good will and good intentions of two strong personalities they make the newly integrated team the Titans work.
Even with two Academy Awards and several nominations besides, I doubt Denzel Washington will ever get a more beloved role than Herman Boone. In addition to coach, Washington is husband to Nicole Ari Parker and father to Krysten Leigh Jones. Later on when Patton's daughter Hayden Panettiere comes over to the Washington household to visit, she spends more time with Washington going over the game than with her peer dressing the dolls that little girls are supposed to play with. My favorite scene in the film is with Washington and Panettiere who loves the idea of a child even a girl taking an interest in what puts food on the table, but not quite understanding it.
The kids make it work as well. Ryan Hurst who was the team captain under Patton and Donald Faison one of the new black players forge their own bond and make it happen for the rest. Those who won't go with the new program have to learn or leave.
My two favorites are the two outsiders who also help make it work. Kip Pardue plays a California hippie type kid who also likes football, if you can fathom that combination and Ethan Suplee who just moved into town and just wants to play football. Neither of them are hung up on all the racial stuff the town was going through, they're presence on the Titans is invaluable.
You won't have any problems in remembering the Titans. This is a fine inspirational film showing that people of good will can put hate aside if the better parts of their person is appealed to.