Racism sure was ugly in '60s America.
Glory Road
is the sort of film that reminds viewers that there was once terrible racism in this country, but through the perseverance of brave white people-and black people with stiff upper lips-we've managed to come a long way. Of course, the evil racism in the film is packaged with so much Disney-fied sanitization that it makes sensitive people feel bad, without making them feel too bad.
Well, you know what? I'm all for people feeling bad about racism. But these let's-all-join-hands-and-sing-"We Are the World" movies don't go very far to make the world a better place, because they seldom show how bad it was-or is.
Based on a true story,
Glory Road
joins a never-ending list of underdogs-overcoming-insurmountable-odds sports movies that includes everything from Rocky to
Remember the Titans
to the slew of films last year like
Rebound, Coach Carter
and the remade
Bad News Bears
.
***image1***Josh Lucas stars as Don Haskins, the former girls' high-school basketball coach who took over as head coach at Texas Western College in 1965. Working with limited resources, Haskins set out to build the best team he possibly could. But when that didn't work out, he did the unthinkable: He decided to recruit black players for his starting lineup, which at the time was almost unheard of. Miraculously, to the surprise of everyone, Haskins led his team to a near-perfect season and, in what many believe was the most important college basketball game of all time, a stunning 1966 NCAA championship over Kentucky.
It might be hard for some people to believe, but it's absolutely true: There was a time when this country treated black people kind of badly. Seriously. Black people couldn't vote (now their votes just aren't counted), there was opposition to legislation making lynching illegal and it was a commonly held belief that blacks could not play basketball on a par with whites. This is where
Glory Road
balances on a precarious ledge, for while it does address the racist notions that prevailed in this country, it makes the subject matter as family-friendly as possible.
"You're carrying on like Negroes is the future of basketball," says assistant coach Ross Moore (Red West) in the sort of sugarcoated way the film deals with most issues regarding race. The biggest flaw of
Glory Road,
however, is not the way it handles the topic of bigotry. Sure, the kid-gloves treatment of racism is less a slap in the face than a not-so-gentle caress. Even the age-old ***image2***story of the brave white man who ventures into the world of noble savages only to discover they are more noble than savage is not the film's biggest weakness. Ultimately,
Glory Road
fails because of an uninspired script, lackluster direction and an unending barrage of clichés. It seems amazing that a true-life tale could be so riddled with hackneyed dialogue, but then you just need to remember this same story was released at least five times last year.
The film does have some good moments, with its biggest triumph, and most engaging sequence, coming during the final credits, when interview clips with the real-life players and Haskins flash across the screen.
Glory Road
, despite its good intentions, is a film that will give people a fairly painless reminder of the struggles faced by blacks in this country four decades ago.
