Tossing it out there like a football, this sport movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer isn't really much about football, but preaching against racism. Inspired by real events, the movie starts out with a new football coach of the TC Williams High School Titans, Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) must put a newly desegregated school football team together. He faced pressure from a staff, and town not yet ready to be racial diversity. Denzel Washington portrays Boone as a hard-ass man. Most of the scenes, we hardly see him lightly up. He puts his team of real life athletes made out of yet famous oncoming actors through the grinder through football camp. Look out for Donald Faison, Ethan Suplee, and Ryan Gosling all new, whom gone off to bigger and better roles. This team is lead by team captains Gerry Bertier (Ryan Hurst of 'Son of Anarachy' fame) and Julius Campbell (Wood Harris) or as they are mostly known as Main White Guy and Main Black Guy. After returning from football camp, Boone is told by a member of the school board that if he loses even a single game, he will be fired. Not only that, but there is hatred for him, replacing long favorite coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton). Note to audience, look out for a really young Hayden Panettiere playing his tomboy football fan daughter. Bill decides he wants move on to other coaching opportunities. In a show of respect and in an attempt to ease racial tension, Boone offers an assistant coaching position to Yoast. Yoast at first refuses Boone's offer, but is then tempted to join after the white players pledge to boycott the team if he doesn't participate. Dismayed at the prospect of the students losing their chances at scholarships, Yoast changes his mind. Subsequently, the Titans must go through the season undefeated while battling racial prejudice. The movie has a good message, but it's so predictable, and formulaic. It's always there to remind you that racism is bad. Sometimes the movie can be a little bit too preachy. The long-suffering, heroic black players are all portrayed as decent if understandably angry given the atmosphere of overt hostility, but with few flaws that might flesh out or sully their characters' purity as symbols in the civil rights struggle. The white players, on the other hand, range from the villainous to the buffoonish to the saintly. You see this time after time in Hollywood movies before and after. It's become too much of the same. The film also suffers from historically inaccurates, and fabrications sub-stories, while it's doesn't hurt the film at all, it shines some real-life characters in a bad light or misleading such as Bertier's girlfriend being racist and Ronald 'Sunshine' Bass being bi or gay. The people of Alexandria were rarely racist at all, but also sophisticated and multicultural at the time, as the streets were suburbs rather than a small, isolated town picture in the film. I'm not saying there wasn't racial tension, but not in what they made picture in the film. One of the worst thing about the film is the third act and ending--- the film goes off into 'Win one for the gipper' mode to demonstrate the essence of the film; that despite differences the team was united and the legacy of the monumental all-out-victory football season carried on. Rather than ending the film at the final game, the film leaves the audience in a sour-note by explaining what happen to one of their team members 10 years later. The epilogue reveals what many of the Titans are doing today was kinda cheesy. The film does a great job on the use of music, both in film score composer in Trevor Rabin 'Titan Spirit' which is epic and the use of popular music of the day such as Ain't No Mountain High Enough" of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell & 'Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye" Steam. All three songs has been associated for years after this movie with the Titans. Most known those tunes by this movie. The movie is a family friendly movie. So check it out, and remember the titans.
