Glory Road

Plot synopsis:
Evelyn Cyril "E.C." Gordon (also known as "Easy" and "Flash") had been recently discharged from an unnamed war in Southeast Asia. He is pondering what to do with his future and considers spending a year traveling in France. He is presented with a dilemma: follow up on a possible winning entry in the Irish Sweepstakes or respond to a newspaper ad which asks "Are you a coward?". He settles on the latter, discovering it has been placed by Star, a stunningly gorgeous woman he had previously met on Île du Levant. Star informs him that he is the one to embark on a perilous quest to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix. When she asks what to call him, he wants to suggest Scarface, referring to the scar on his face, but she stops him as he is saying "Oh, Scar..." and repeats this as "Oscar", and thus gives him his new name. Along with Rufo, her assistant, who appears to be a man in his fifties, they tread the "Glory Road" in swashbuckling style, slaying dragons and other exotic creatures.
Shortly before the final Quest for the Egg itself, Oscar and Star marry. The team then proceeds to enter the tower in which the Egg has been hidden, navigating a maze of illusions and optical tricks. Oscar scouts ahead and encounters a fearsome foe who, though unnamed, is clearly the legendary 17th-century swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac, the final guardian of the Egg. After a long fight, the party escapes with the Egg. When they arrive in the home universe of Star and Rufo, Rufo informs Oscar that Star is actually the Empress of many worlds—and Rufo's grandmother.
The Egg is a cybernetic device that contains the knowledge and experiences of most of her predecessors. Despite her youthful appearance, she is the mother of dozens of children (by egg donation) and has undergone special medical treatments that extend her life much longer than usual. She has Oscar unknowingly receive the same treatments.
Initially, Oscar enjoys his new-found prestige and luxurious life as the husband of the Empress of the Twenty Universes. However, as time goes on, he grows bored and feels out of place and useless. When he demands Star's professional judgment, she tells him that he must leave; her world has no place or need for a hero of his stature. It will be decades before she can complete the transfer of the knowledge held in the Egg, so he must go alone. He returns to Earth but has difficulty readjusting to his own world, despite having brought great wealth along with him. He begins to doubt his own sanity and whether the adventure even happened. The story ends as he is contacted by Rufo to set up another trip along the Glory Road.

Tags: inspiring, sentimental, feel-good

Review:
The producers should have shown the real life characters, including Coach Haskins, Pat Riley, and some of the actual 1966 players earlier in the credits, because most of the audiences leave the theater without knowing they're going to be interviewed.
In 1966, a coach of a girl's basketball team comes to Texas Western College and recruits seven black players to lead them to the top.Right from the trailers and the posters, you probably know how "Glory Road" is gonna go: an underdog NCAA basketball team must face great odds to win the championship.
Josh Lucas gives a terrific performance as Don Haskins, the head coach of the team that featured the first all-black starting lineup in US NCAA history."Glory Road" is a formulaic yet an enjoyable film.
"Glory Road" tells the true story of Don Haskins, the basketball coach for Western Texas College, who in the mid 1960's, broke the color barrier in the NCAA by being the first to feature a majority of black players on his team.
The movie chronicles the obstacles he and his players faced, as well as their ultimate triumph when the team won the national championship in 1966."Glory Road" worships at the altar of just about every underdog-sports-movie cliché one can imagine, yet the viewer can't help getting caught up in its story anyway.
It's simply one of those great sports movie that's really well done.This is the story based on one of the most historic series of games in basketball history.
The movie should have paid more time on Coach Haskins' three guard strategy to counter Kentucky's fast break offense.Glory Road is an inspirational movie but not a very accurate movie if you know the history of TWC.
The only thing that bothered me about this movie was that removal of some important facts.Texas Western had three Black Players on the team already, upon Don Haskin's Arrival.
In 1965, the coach of the high school girl basketball team Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) is invited by the Texas Western Miners to be their coach.
He recruits seven talented and rejected black players to play with five Caucasian players and formed a legendary team that wined the 1966 national championship against the powerful Kentucky."Glory Road" is an engaging film with a great message based on a true story.
Josh Lucas stars in "Glory Road," a 2006 Disney film, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.The film purports to tell the true story of Don Haskins, the basketball coach led the Texas Western Miners to a National Championship victory in 1966.From what I know, there is a lot of dramatic license taken here, though it remains an inspiring story, and the basketball game played at the championships was very exciting.
I think what made him stand out were the numbers and the fact that at the championship, the starters were black and everyone on the Kentucky team was white.The film shows Haskins as an extremely tough coach, and his insistence that there be no "showboating" However, during a losing game (and I have no idea if this is true) one of the black players told Haskins that they should be allowed to play "their game" which included some showboating, I guess.
Living in El Paso TX waiting for friends to finish their time serving in the Army at Fort Bliss leaves me a lot of time to study local culture and history in this border town, and I spend a lot of time going to the movies.Recently, Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer made a film based on a true story about a small time basketball coach who, in 1966, took the lowly Texas Westerns to the NCAA championship.
Called "Glory Road" tells the story of Don Haskins -- the first college basketball coach to integrate his team with African-American players causing an immediate firestorm of controversy.
"Road" is formula at its most poisonous, with Gartner mechanically visualizing the Crayola script, regardless of how ridiculous the film gets."Road" is grabbing at inspirational and heart-warming messages, but the screenplay is entirely obnoxious, plugging up any honest thrill of this story with appalling caricatures of Caucasians (who wave Confederate flags at the final game), one-dimensional supporting roles (Emily Deschanel, as Haskins's wife, is given nothing to play), and bestowing immediate sainthood on any black character within striking distance.The script even gives one player a heart defect for him to overcome, just to jackhammer home the point that these guys had everything against them.
I can't fault Bruckheimer for softening the story, but in his pursuit to make a film that has vicious mass appeal, he's bled the humanity and emotional weight completely out of this significant historical achievement.If it wasn't for Josh Lucas's performance as Haskins, there wouldn't be anything in "Road" to recommend.
Glory Road is a fine story, no disagreement, but like all racial movies, it lacks honesty, and fair dealing.Truth be told, racism is not an issue today for blacks, period.
The best moments are those that are unique to this individual portrait of an ambitious small college basketball coach who makes the somewhat cynical decision just to win by exponentially integrating NCAA games through the recruitment and playing of black players in the early '60's.
I was hoping for some ironic awareness that as well as seeing this story as a great civil rights victory of some kind that a coach was playing all-black starters and winning against larger schools with only token black players that this might have been the moment in time when somehow the message all started to go wrong: is this when the wheel turned so that education became a farce --and the only classes we see them in do seem to be dumbed down jock courses-- and all that mattered would be the human and other bling and signing to the NBA from high school?
Of course, the credits hasten to add that Rupp later expanded his black roster and coaching staff.I know very little about basketball so I appreciated that all the games were narrated by sports broadcasters.Per any Bruckheimer produced movie, it is very loud.
The movie did a great job showing the injustice the West Texas basketball team got while they were on the road.
The movie moves at a pretty good clip and keeps you interested.And it's a great story about a great team...except apparently someone didn't think the story was good enough, because they took this really good story and changed it until it barely resembles the true story.Yes, Texas Western won the NCAA title that year with an all African- American starting lineup and they did beat an all white Kentucky team in the finals and those two teams were coached by Haskins and Adolph Rupp.
Yeah, it's a great story, but we really need to change it around, make up a few things, and you know what...why don't we just make most of it up.There was one scene in the movie that portrayed the Miners traveling to East Texas State for a game and showing an extremely hostile, racist crowd.
Glory Road tells the amazing story of the underdog Texas Western basketball team, with history's first all-African American starting lineup of players, who took over the nation and surprisingly making it to the NCAA tournament title game in 1966.
In 1962 Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) - a player who had big dreams to play basketball in college that eventually disappeared because of a knee injury- went West to El Paso, to take the Head Coach position at Texas Western University, a school not known for its basketball program.
Haskins knows he has no chance of recruiting the best white players to come to small Texas Western, so he and his assistant coach flew out north to find African Americans who are happy to have scholarships and a chance to play D-1 college basketball.
In Texas at that time, we learn, college basketball teams had been integrated, but there was an "informal rule" that you never played more than one black player at home games, two on the road or three if you were behind.
It's about racism in American sports, and how coach Haskins and his players from Texas Western University made a remarkable moment in history I believe can be comparable to when Jackie Robinson was picked up by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
After Texas Western played in the the 1966 NCAA championship with an all-black team on the court and went against an all-white Kentucky team coached by the hall of fame legend Adolph Rupp, rules were rewritten.
"Glory Road" is an effective sports movie, but where it succeeds is as the story of a chapter in history, the story of how one coach at one school arrived at an obvious conclusion and acted on it, disregarding the racial rules of the 1960s.
Since this movie was based on a true story, the end credits tell us what happened in later life to the members of that 1966 Texas Western team, we realize that Haskins not only played for a NCAA title but made a contribution to the future that is still being acknowledged.
"Glory Road" is based upon the true story of the Texas Western mens basketball team who won the 1966 NCAA Championship and created history along the way by starting 5 black players in an era when most black players languished on the bench.We follow the story from the hiring of coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas, in his best role since "Poisedon").
(Synopsis) "Glory Road" was inspired by a true story of Texas Western's Coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), who led the first all-black starting lineup team to the 1966 NCAA national basketball championship title.
Coach Haskins has a lot going against him: first, Texas Western has a poor basketball program, and second, he cannot recruit good white players to the team.
With courage and determination, Coach Haskins changed basketball history, when his underdog team beats the powerhouse Kentucky team.(Comment) This is a very good movie that you should see.
Nothing should take away from the amazing circumstances that led coach Don Haskins to defy southern standards and start playing a mostly black NCAA team in El Paso, Texas during a time when the U.S. was rife with bigoted undertones.
But then you watch this Disney film and wonder what went wrong...The legend of "The Bear" (Haskins) lives on in the El Paso community and should leave little doubt in anyone's mind that this great man accomplished something extraordinary in 1966 by leading his black and white Texas Western basketball team to the national title.
While I agree that Glory Road is exciting and inspiring, the fact remains that the movie takes liberties with the real facts.First of all was Jon Voights role as Adolph Rupp.Im a native Kentuckian and listened to and later saw interviews with the noted Kentucky coach .
The annals of postwar America are full of such moments, but few of them are as astonishing and consequential as the 1966 N.C.A.A. championship game, in which Don Haskins, coach of the Miners of Texas Western (now known as the University of Texas at El Paso), sent five black players onto the floor against Adolph Rupp's all- white University of Kentucky team." Forget about Josh Lucas, Tatyana Ali, Emily Deschanel, or Jon Voight.
The movie GLORY ROAD directed by James Gartner is a sports drama that's narrates the story of the underdogs of Texas Western College.
The true story of the Texas Western University Miners (now called the University of Texas at El Paso) who defied all odds in 1966 by being the first NCAA basketball team to start five African-American players (led by Derek Luke of "Antwone Fisher" and Mehchad Brooks of "Desperate Housewives" fame) and ultimately winning the national championship.
The true story of the Texas Western University Miners (now called the University of Texas at El Paso) who defied all odds in 1966 by being the first NCAA basketball team to start five African-American players (led by Derek Luke of "Antwone Fisher" and Mehchad Brooks of "Desperate Housewives" fame) and ultimately winning the national championship.
New coach Don Haskins (played superbly by Josh Lucas, one of the most under-rated actors in film right now) has trouble recruiting when he first arrives, but finds players in places like Detroit and Brooklyn.
New coach Don Haskins (played superbly by Josh Lucas, one of the most under-rated actors in film right now) has trouble recruiting when he first arrives, but finds players in places like Detroit and Brooklyn.
First I'd like to say that I was relentless to watch this movie, I usually don't like sport related films but the fact that it's based on a true story made me change my mind, maybe is because I live in ciudad Juarez, the Mexico-USA Border and you learn a little history of the town or at least of the university and why the stadium is called the don Haskins center, the acting was amazing, it was a little fast paced but it was alright, although the wife of don Haskins kept appearing without any real contribution to the story which seemed to me a little annoying, but all in all it was a pretty damn good movie to watch.
Based on a true story, the film follows how basketball coach Dan Haskins broke down racial barriers during the 1966 NCAA national basketball championship season.You got to hand it to Disney, after the success of Remember the Titans in 2000, they must have trawled long and hard to find another sports based underdog story involving racial concerns.
Glory Road is set in 1966, when the Texas Western University coach Don Haskins changes the history of collegiate sports by starting five black players in the final match-up against national powerhouse Kentucky.
Glory Road, directed by James Gartner, tells the story of the 1965-1966 Texas Western boys basketball team and their journey to win an NCAA division one championship with a predominately African American team.
The actual game of basketball has very little to do with what makes Glory Road a must-see film - especially for the younger generations for this is a true story of how prejudice is overcome by principle and strong will.Those who do know of the basketball season depicted in Glory Road will know of Don Haskins who was the coach at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso).
Texas Western was one of the first southern colleges to integrate its sports teams, and the final championship game of the 1966 season was the first in which all starting players were Black.Haskins is depicted as a strong-willed man set upon his proved strategies as a coach who learns some new things from the cocky Black players recruited to bring life to a failing team.
The movie "Glory Road" (2006) showed how one coach changed things for African Americans who wanted to play college basketball in 1961.In "Glory Road" Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), a Texas Western coach, led the first African American starters to a NCAA final championship game.
It was no overnight feat that Haskins accomplished (this film shows him starting in 1965, when in actuality his Texas Western team had reached the NCAA Sweet Sixteen a year before that.) When you see the beginning disclaimer "Based on the true story..." you know there will be scenes that are either untrue or overly dramatized for effect, but it still amazes me that films like this and SEABISCUIT contain gross historical inaccuracies.
This is the inspirational story of Don Haskins, a winning high-school girls basketball coach who was hired to lead the NCAA Division 1 men's basketball program at Texas Western University (TWC) in El Paso.
Based on true events, Bruckheimer-produced 'Glory Road' tells the Disney-fied story of the underdog Texas Western University men's basketball team that won the National Championship in 1966 while starting, for the first time in NCAA history, five African-American players.
'Glory Road' is sport movie by the numbers, featuring an earnest, hard-working rookie coach, reluctant but idealist players, ups and downs, swelly climactic basketball games and newspaper montages of the team's national success.
The movie not really show how much Haskins cared about all his players, and failed to mention that he played basketball as a boy with black friends.The DVD also contains some great extras like interviews with players of that team and inverviews with the coach and his wife.Of course I am a Proud graduate of UTEP...Go Miners..
Gartners sports film about the true story of the first NCAA basketball team who led by Don Haskins had the first time several African American players are used.
When a women's high school basketball coach named Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) is offered a position as a division 1 men's basketball coach for a small Texas Western school in 1965, he will stop at nothing to wineven recruiting colored basketball players that no one else wanted.Glory Road did a good job on many things but lacked everything else needed to make it an outstanding film.
Not even giving them a chance to step on the court and cherish the glory of one minute's playing time was a bizarre strategy.As hotshot point guard Billy Joe Hill, Derek Luke ("Antwone Fisher," "Friday Night Lights") gives the best performance, but Lucas' Haskins is the clichéd tough guy coach with a heart of gold we've seen in countless such movies.Overall, while this is an interesting film that I recommend people to see (if for the historical element, if nothing else), I still think "Hoosiers" is the definitive underdog basketball motion picture, hands down.
That's the nickname of the Texas Western College basketball team that was the first NCAA Division 1 team to win the National Championship by using only black players in the final game.
There is still racism TODAY in Texas and other southern states.The movie does an excellent job of showing what the coach and players had to go through to reach the final championship game.