Flak Magazine: Review of Remember The Titans, 10-06-00

As Denzel Washington explores the pulpit-pounding stage of his career, he has shown the distinct ability to select projects as subtle as an SUV on a bike trail. Despite its football-movie dressings, Remember the Titans is a two-hour lesson in discrimination, but it's also a remarkable movie that expresses its message with far more success than The Hurricane, He Got Game, Malcolm X and Philadelphia could have dreamed of.

Yes, teasers and trailers suggest the next great sports epic. During the actual picture, though, there is no question — Titans is about racism in Alexandria, Va., in 1971. Without delay, the viewer is plunged into world of the recently desegregated T.C. Williams High School and the hiring of its new assistant coach, Herman Boone (Washington). Boone is quickly pushed past Hall-of-Fame candidate Bill Yoast (Will Patton) into the head coaching position. Within five minutes, the town is in an uproar, the players are at each others' throats and the coaching staff is a circus of second-guessing.

As far as sports stories go, though, Titans is outrageously typical and marches every tired element onto the field. The training camp. The understanding. The tradition. The town rift. The girlfriend. The injury, the ultimatum, the scheme. The invisible hand. The game. The play. Director Boaz Yakin (A Price Above Rubies) presents it all on a silver platter.

In fact, all of the expected characters are present. Denzel is the black coach who interrupts his mission of progress only once — and for no more than 60 seconds — to reflect upon his role in Alexandria. Patton gives another solid shit-grin performance as the bumped coach who slowly learns the ways of the new world. While both perform well, neither really escape the blanket titles of Black Coach and White Coach.

Almost all of the players stay in their respective trenches, too, following the familiar path to racial understanding. Bertier (Ryan Hurst), the strong but thankfully understanding white captain. Julius (Wood Harris, As Good As It Gets), the black captain. The white starters, unseated. The black starters, uprising. The first goal of Titans is to create a racially cohesive football team and coaching staff, but as the enlightened players step off their team buses after training camp, even more racial stereotypes arise: the reluctant mother. The biased shopkeeper. The unsettled alumni. Coach Boone gets hate mail, the brick through the window and the lose-and-out threat. As is standard fare, the film is haunted at every moment by the constant presence of racism.

With all these commonplace conventions, what is it that makes Remember the Titans outstanding? It is the fact that for once, a movie has succeeded by the "less is more" mantra. Washington is not a scene-dominating sponge in Titans; rather, he is simply a character with the benefit of icon status. In fact, no one or two characters are given an unusually larger slice of attention than the rest. The tight script gave little room for producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon, The Rock) to inflict his big-balls influence. Colorful language is entirely eliminated from the Gregory Allen Howard script, making it a movie for all ages. Without these hindrances, Titans becomes an unrelenting composition that wastes no words as it fits a three-hour package into two glorious hours.

This achievement in scripting and direction is embodied in one character — Sunshine (Kip Pardue, a name to note), the ambiguously gay backup quarterback. In one brief moment, a black runningback tries to ask the white blonde Sunshine about his sexuality. Sunshine's simple response embodies the spirit of the movie: If it doesn't affect you, what does it matter?

This conversation is not featured prominently; like any other slice of the egalitarian screen time, it is touch-and-go. In one swift moment, Sunshine teaches viewer and teammate alike: Differences that do not affect us deserve little attention. The beauty of Titans is the response to the message, which matches the response of the football team to Sunshine's ambiguity: Understand, accept and move on toward success. Touch-and-go.

As for Washington, his role as Boone is far more effective than his preachy turns in the recent spate of message movies for one reason: Herman Boone doesn't need to preach, condemn or dominate his peers. As Boone, Denzel broadcasts everything he needs to say about racism by simply teaching his players, raising his family and winning at football. Unlike Malcolm X, Herman Boone is an icon, not an idol. Alexandria points to him as a symbol of understanding. His presence is all that is needed to defeat racism.

For Washington, this is truly a case of less is more.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)