Academy Award(R)-winner Denzel Washington (Best Actor, TRAINING DAY, 2001) gives a victorious performance in this stirring and uplifting film. REMEMBER THE TITANS is a rousing celebration of how a town torn apart by resentment, friction, and mistrust comes together in triumphant harmony. The year is 1971. After leading his team to 15 winning seasons, football coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone (Washington), tough, opinionated, and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. How these two men overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions, plays out in a remarkable and triumphant story full of soul and spirit. You and your family will never forget the Titans.With only one major star (Denzel Washington), an appealing cast of fresh unknowns, and a winning emphasis of substance over self-indulgent style, Boaz Yakin’s Remember the Titans is, like Rudy before it, a football movie that will be fondly remembered by anyone who sees it.
Set in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971, the fact-based story begins with the integration of black and white students at T. C. Williams High School. This effort to improve race relations is most keenly felt on the school’s football team, the Titans, and bigoted tempers flare when a black head coach (Washington) is appointed and his victorious predecessor (Will Patton) reluctantly stays on as his assistant. It’s affirmative action at its most potentially volatile, complicated by the mandate that the coach will be fired if he loses a single game in the Titans’ 13-game season. The players represent a hotbed of racial tension, but as the team struggles toward unity and gridiron glory, Remember the Titans builds on several subplots and character dynamics to become an inspirational drama of Rocky-like proportions.
Yakin–whose debut, Fresh, was one of the best independent films of the 1990s–understands the value of connecting small scenes to form a rich climactic payoff. Likewise, Washington provides a solid dramatic foundation (his coach is obsessively harsh, but for all the right reasons) while giving his younger co-stars ample time in the spotlight. The result is a film that achieves what it celebrates: an enriching sense of unity that’s unquestionably genuine. (Ages 9 and older) –Jeff Shannon
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May 13, 2008
#1
If you want to see a good football movie go see RUDY, or better yet HOOSIERS!, THIS movie sux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
At first i thought There couldnt be a movie as bad as antz, but this movie blows this way away , theres not one thing in this movie that is good , the actor suck , and denzel should not be playing this part , he is far way to good for this movie , if anything he makes the movie 1-5 stars, This movie is the worste movie ive ever seen!!!
May 13, 2008
#2
I recently watched this film on a trans-Pacific flight and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was starved for the diversion after almost 10 1/2 hours I would’ve stopped watching halfway through.
Because this movie revolves around racial themes you’ll hear people talk about it in almost reverential tones. Well, I won’t because it sucked. Think of every bad sports movie you’ve ever seen. Now place Remember the Titans at the top of that list. This movie trots out every Hollywood gimmick I can think of. If he loses a game he loses his job – oh no! Will he actually lose? The rich white kids hate the poor black kids and vice versa – oh no! Will they ever find some common ground? The mean city council tries to set-up the new coach – oh no! Will they actually succeed with their nefarious plan? The California, hippy quarterback just can’t get the toss on the option – oh no! What will happen when he has to replace the starting QB? The all-star jock is injured just before the big championship game – oh no! Will the team pull through?
I could go on, but I won’t. You catch my drift. There are no redeeming qualities to this movie. I wish it had a stronger (or perhaps a more “real”) message about race. I wish it had a stronger message about the triumph of the human spirit. I wish I could have enjoyed Denzel’s performance. I wish they had made a better movie out of the material.
May 13, 2008
#3
It is common knowledge in the film critic community that sentimentality, if used improperly, is among the most hated of all celluloid evils. “Remember The Titans” provides a step-by-step lesson in how not to use it.
The film is based on the true story of the Titans, a high school football team from the small town of Alexandria, Virginia. It is 1971, their school has just been integrated, and their beloved head coach (Patton) has been replaced with a fiery African-American named Herman Boone (Washington). The players encounter a flurry of racial problems, and Boone hauls them all away to training camp to make them become not just a perfect football team, but friends as well. The film then chronicles the Titans’ perfect season as they struggle to cope with a hateful, bigoted nation.
From the first to the last frame of “Titans”, the audience is bombarded with an insurmountable amount of genre clichés and cringe-inducing cheese. To give you an idea of said cheese, let me just say that I cannot count on my fingers the number of times one or more characters randomly burst into song for no reason, usually singing what is sort of the film’s theme song, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross. This is meant to be heart-warming, playful, and inspiring, but it just comes off as irritating. As far as clichés…lord, where do I start? We have copious amounts of “soulful” black characters who want to do nothing but love their “brothers”, the “tough” controversial coach who just wants to unite the team (and his underdeveloped assistant who just acts as someone to feed him back lines so he can essentially have conversations with himself), the promising athlete who is injured just before the “big game”, the ostentatious ladies’ man with a big ego, the sensitive, “enlightened” hippie with long blonde locks (who is, of course, considered homosexual), the up-tight redneck who always hates “c–ns” no matter what, the loveable “Bubba”, the “cute” “I’m nine and a half!” tomboy girl who loves football, not Barbies (complete with a foil little girl to emphasize how much she loves football and hates Barbies!), and two, count ‘em, two token “fat guys” whose purpose is to simply provide contrived comic relief, usually in the form of singing the aforementioned “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”.
On top of the script being shallow, predictable, conventional, and all too sentimental, I think one of the things that bothered me the most about “Titans” was Trevor Rabin’s intrusive, grating score. It was nothing but a ubiquitous, inescapable cliché trying to tell the audience what to think. It was, to put it bluntly, insulting.
The acting is capably handled by Denzel Washington and Will Patton (who are both very talented actors who consistently accept awful roles), but everyone else in this turgid mess stumbles through their bland scenes and poorly-written lines with about as much intensity as a dead turtle. The direction, delivered by Boaz Yakin (whose illustrious directing career is comprised of three other films including the fabulous “Uptown Girls”! He also wrote such fantastic films as “From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money”, “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights”, and, surprise, surprise, “The Rookie”, another touching Disney sports extravaganza!), is utterly pedestrian. Also, the soundtrack is comprised of ’60s and ’70s rock songs that are all great, but have become nothing more than mood-setting clichés (someone’s been watching too much “Forrest Gump”).
“Remember The Titans” also suffers from the severe detriment of taking itself too seriously. It is trying so self-consciously hard to deliver a message that it ends up doing nothing but degrading the audience’s intelligence with its obvious agenda. It tries to force us to laugh, cry, and be inspired, but it only succeeds in annoying us.
The only thing that saves this film from falling into the D range are its occasional entertaining moments, but they are far too little to save this twisted wreck of overused morals and tired storytelling vehicles. Denzel, please try to stay away from horrid wastes of celluloid such as this and try to star in more films like “Training Day”. You can do better.
4/10
May 13, 2008
#4
Based on a true story the film recounts the forced integration of Virginia’s T.C. Williams High School in 1971. It portrays how the football team was merged with both black and white students. To further complicate matters the existing white coach is made the assistant to a black coach. This period of American history was a time of social upheaval, and civil rights were foremost on people’s minds. Unfortunately, many of the town’s people were unable to accept these changes. The parents of these children were prejudice and passed on their discrimination to their sons and daughters.
The movie unsuccessfully tries to provoke conversation about racial prejudice, particularly in small town America where Friday night football is king. The reason it fails is that Boaz Yakin the director tries to make a feel good movie out of a problem that is very real. The football players find a common goal in winning, and slowly become more excepting of their racial differences while at spring training. The parents meanwhile are trying to undermine the black coach at every turn. There is the inevitable brick through the window with the racial slur that frightens the family of the black coach. However, it was passed off as no big deal. The busing of the black children into the school showed the whites protesting until the nice white football players made a stand to stop the harassment and giving a false sense of unity with their black comrades. Both these scenes, and many other racially questionable scenes, were glossed over to make the movie more pleasant for the movie going public.
When a director makes a movie about such emotional times in U.S. history, they owe it to the audience to be provocative; show it as it really was. The students of that time who were bussed into white schools were terrified. The National Guard was called out. The students were subjected to both physical and verbal abuse. Ironically, these events are sterilized by filmmakers, and do nothing to raise questions to the cinema audience about the times they are portraying.
There were also other underlying types of discrimination in the movie. These were so lightly touched upon to keep the movie a family feel good movie that it was almost insulting to the viewers. There was a sexually ambiguous boy from California, an over weight child, and a girl who know more about football that many of the males. It was as if the director was covering all the bases to be social correct but failed to make a stand engaging the problems of racism, homosexuality, obesity, and women rights. If your going to make a movie about controversial subjects then the director should address those subjects and not sanitized them commercial viewing. Teenagers watching this movie would see a feel good version of the civil rights movement. This is reinforced at the end of the movie. The director adds a postscript listing all the wonderful achievements that the students and coaches achieved in their lives, as if they never had a day of trouble after they came together to win the big game for their recently paralyzed team mate.
Today there is still social economic segregation within our schools; most inner city schools are predominantly black and poor students. There are very few black professional or college level coaches. There is still intolerance of sexual orientation. Americans are the most obese people in the world and yet they still discriminate against over weight people. Women although gaining the right to vote are consistently paid les than males and are often treated as second-class citizens.
The movie was entertaining despite being a shallow attempt to make a feel good movie about subjects that are as pressing today as they were back then. If you base a movie on a true story, keep it true to the facts, even if they do not paint humanity in a good or bad light.
May 13, 2008
#5
I liked the message of this movie alot but was amazed that they had so many 30something year old guys playing highschoolers… Aren’t there any teenage actors that could play teenagers? Therefore I couldn’t ever believe the acting… Please Disney! There are some fine youthful actors out there!