“Remember the Titans” is a story about racial agreement, cooked to the story of a sports movie. Racism and opposite teams winning change so fast that sometimes we’re not sure if we’re rooting for tolerance or touchdowns. Real life is never as simple, but that’s what the movies are for – to improve life, and give it the daydream of form and purpose.
To start off, the main attraction to this film is, once again, Denzel Washington as Coach Boone. Any role that Denzel plays is so believable because he captures every single essence of the character that makes him as amazing as an actor to have in any film. When Boone takes the coaching position at the desegregated school of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, the former head coach, Bill Yoast, played by Will Patton, denies Boone's offer to be his assistant. That is until his fans make a riot that they will boycott the team, which he then decides to take it. This is believable, because like I had mentioned before, segregation was still going on at the time. So the cast that play the parents are believable because we as an audience get to see how the people were like during segregation. Younger audiences who did not live during that time will get the feeling of what segregation was like and how unfair it was to Blacks. Will Patton is another great actor who really plays the assistant coach well, and helps Boone make the team one of the best that has ever been made.
Coach Boone at first ridicule's the White players because they refuse to play nice alongside the Black players, but then they both work together after a very heated fight between captain Gerry Bertier, played by Ryan Hurst, and Julius Campbell, played by Wood Harris. They both start a fist fight, and then after their argument, Gerry starts yelling at the White players to make them play football with the Black players, especially when offensive lineman Louie Lastik, played by Ethan Suplee, enters the team unexpectedly. The Black players learn to accept him in as well, since he was the first White football player to join. The parents, at first, start a riot when the boys get back and they desegregate the high school, which sounds about right since segregation was starting to get resolved around this time. Since the players learned to get along with each other when they went off to camp, the parents eventually learn as well when the kids come back from camp and start going to school, as along with the other students. Another reason that could have started the team to work together was when Boone wakes them up at 3AM to show them the graveyard of the Battle of Gettysburg, where he gives them a lesson about hatred. This is really strong and has a legitimate argument that all this racial hatred should stop.
When we get to the training camp, it has the usual kids that we have seen so many times in kid sports movies that at first fight, then bond. We’ve seen it before, but the director, Boaz Yakin, brings old circumstances to new life and brings us along in the wave of a master popular entertainment. Even Ebert admitted, “I like the way he shows Boone forcing the blacks and whites to get to know one another.”
They are certain funny moments in this film that I think I will mention. One is when Boone asks Louie about the football player he is roomed with, who happens to be another Offensive Lineman, Darryl "Blue" Stanton, played by Earl C. Poitier, and they break out into singing an oldie song, which is hysterical. Another scene is after Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass, played by Kip Pardue, joins the team as Quarterback, and that locker room segment is just hysterical. The "Yo Mama" jokes, Sunshine kissing Gerry and Gerry flipping out, especially the singing of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" with Blue, Louie, and at the end with Defensive Back Alan Bosley, played by Ryan Gosling, all put together makes it a memorable scene, and one of the best.
Ebert admitted, “I admired the way the screenplay, by Gregory Allen Howard, doesn't make Boone noble and Yoast a racist, but shows them both as ambitious and skilled professionals.” There are moments when Boone treats his players more like war soldiers than high school kids, and Yoast points that out. Also there are moments when Yoast tries to calm the black players who Boone has been hard on, and Boone blames him for overprotecting blacks as he would never overprotect his fellow whites.
The scenes are difficult, and Washington and Patton find just the right way to settle them. Washington has the ability to deliver big speeches without sounded arrogant or looking to hurt. There’s an early morning training jog that leads the boys to the Gettysburg battlefield, and his speech there places their experiences in a big picture.
A note to mention is that this film had some differences to the real-life event. The film shows that Gerry got into an accident near the end of the season, when his accident happened after the championship was over. Yoast says that he lost his chance to make it in the Virginia Hall of Fame, when that didn't exist in 1971. Sheryl Yoast, played by Hayden Panettiere, is shown as Coach Yoast's only daughter, when he had four, and Sheryl passed away in 1996. No evidence is shown that the Titans had a warm-up dance, and it could have been made up just for entertainment in the film. Finally, the film shows that the Titans were underdogs, but by the end of the season, they were 13-0 and ranked second in the nation. In reality, they dominated almost every single one of the games they played, shutting them out in nine of their thirteen games, outscoring by a margin of 338-38. Unlike the film, the championship game was a blowout as well.
Ebert ended his review by saying, “The movie is heartfelt, yes, and I was moved by it, but it plays safe.” On the soundtrack, we hear songs like “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain”and“Ain’t a mountain high enough,” but not other songs that must have also been sung in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971, like “We shall overcome.”
If you would like to watch a good film in Black History Month, or want to watch a football film in general, "Remember the Titans" is a must. It's one of the best football films ever made, even though there are slight differences from the actual event, but I still would recommend that everyone watches this. Alright, the 18th is President's Day, so I think I will review a certain President film that I think fits for that day. Next week will be the final entry in the Black History Month film reviews. What will it be? Stay tuned next week to find out.
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