Remember The Titans

Denzel Washington puts the fascism back in football.

An operatic tale of high school football, racial integration and young men’s passions, “Remember the Titans” is a Hollywood movie Sen. Joseph Lieberman could love (and probably will). Taken on its own terms, it’s an agreeable entertainment, solidly crafted, wonderfully acted and often genuinely moving. Its timing couldn’t be better; it carries a PG rating made to order for the film industry’s new era of self-discipline, so there’s nary a cuss word or a naked babe in sight. That doesn’t mean the movie is free of sex or violence, mind you, only that they’re under the furniture where you can’t quite see them. Beneath its veneer of wholesomeness, “Remember the Titans” is a weird film about a weird sport and a weird country.

On the surface, this is the same inspirational saga seen in dozens of sports movies, with a mild dose of racial tension from “In the Heat of the Night” or “Mississippi Burning” mixed in. Gregory Allen Howard’s screenplay is largely based on real people and real events: It’s 1971, and the population of Alexandria, Va., is deeply divided over the newly integrated high school. In an abrupt spasm of affirmative action, the football team is taken away from longtime coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) and handed over to Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), a black coach from out of state who has just been hired as an assistant.

Yoast eventually persuades himself to stay on as an assistant — partly to protect the white players — and the inevitable subplots develop. The team’s charismatic white and black stars, Gerry Bertier (Ryan Hurst) and Julius Campbell (Wood Harris), forge a passionate friendship out of their initial mutual contempt. (In most movies this would be the romantic subplot with a tragic ending, and it pretty much is in this case too.) A pretty-boy California quarterback (Kip Pardue) and a humongous white-trash lineman (Ethan Suplee) show up to provide comic relief. A sensitive black player (Donald Faison of “Clueless”) is hounded by Boone but nurtured by Yoast at a key moment in the team’s evolution. Even the two coaches’ irritatingly cute daughters become friends.Full articel