Dir. James Gartner
Writ. Chris Cleveland, Bettina Gilois
Act. Josh Lucas, Damaine Radcliff, Jon Voight

It appears that the wonderful world of Disney wants to corner the market on inspirational historical sports stories. Six years ago they gave us Remember the Titans, then Miracle, last year it was The Greatest Game ever played, and this year brings us Glory Road, the story about the Texas Western's trip to the final four in the NCAA tournament.

Josh Lucas (Stealth) portrays Don Haskins, a girl's high school basketball coach that gets hired to coach the men's Texas Western college basketball team in 1965. In order to compete, Coach Haskins goes to the inner cities of Detroit, Chicago, and New York to recruit black athletes to play for his team. The team fights adversity between each other and the prejudice's of a nation that is not used to seeing more than one black player on a major college team. Haskins leads his team to the championship game to play against the all white powerhouse Kentucky, led by Adolph Rupp, played by Jon Voight (National Treasure.) To make a statement against the prejudices of a nation, Haskins starts five black basketball players in the championship game, for the first time in the history of the sport. Using only his black players, Haskins leads his Texas Western team to an upset win over Kentucky, and becoming the first team to when a college national championship with an all black starting lineup.

This is definitely Josh Lucas's best performance I have seen as Haskins. That being said it was not spectacular. His performance was very even and very believable, but the way the part was written, it was hard for him to add any depth of character to the role. Another actor of note was Jon Voight as Rupp. When I first saw Rupp, I said to my self that it had to be Voight, not knowing that he was in the movie. However, when he spoke I was convinced that it was not him because it didn't sound like it to me. Voight did some great vocal work with his character, and even though he was in the movie for only a brief time, he was probably the best actor on the screen. The rest of the actors really didn't have a chance to develop any parts because I feel that they were written poorly so I won't blame them for their uninspiring performance.

The problem with the movie is the story. It was written such a way that there is virtually no conflict for the actors other than the racial issues that the team had to endure during the season. It is as if the writer was telling us that race was the only issue that the team had to endure, which I simply won't believe. Plus this movie is oh so very Disney. The racial scenes were mild in comparison to that of Remember The Titans, and not even close to Mississippi Burning. Because there is no character development for ANY character in the show, the story drags, and is boring. The final game was mildly interesting just to see how it played out, but I don't know if having Jon Voight portray Rupp as a racist was the wisest decision.

If you want to watch this movie to see a Hollywood version of the historical account of the Texas Western basketball team, then watch this movie. If you want to see a good basketball movie then watch Hoosiers, if you want to watch a movie about sports and racism, watch Remember the Titans.

Brian - the Naked Gun