In the mold of Rudy, Remember The Titans, Friday Night Lights, and Brian’s Song comes Gary Fleder’s 2008 The Express starring Rob Brown as Ernie Davis, a Syracuse football running back from the early 1960s, and Dennis Quiad as Ben Schwartzwalder, Ernie’s college football coach. Ernie Davis became the first black athlete ever to win the Heisman Trophy. That is a considerable feat, but some people do not know that Davis succeeded Jim Brown at Syracuse University. Jim Brown is arguably the greatest football player and US athlete ever.
The movie follows Davis over about six years, from his days as a senior in high school being recruited by Schwartzwalder to Davis’s early professional career. Ernie, one of three black players on the Syracuse football team, must first win over his white teammates, then must convince his conservative coach that it’s time for him to change some of his ways, and finally must battle opponents on the football field out to hurt and degrade simply because of the color of his skin.
The Express is truly a combination of Sean Austin’s 1994 Rudy, a highly successful and critically acclaimed true story about an undersized football player who overcomes the odds to play football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and Denzel Washington’s 2000 Remember the Titans, a true story about a coach who integrates a racially diverse football team in its inaugural season. The only problem is Rob Brown and Dennis Quaid’s (Vantage Point, Frequency) performances aren’t nearly as good as Austin’s and Washington’s. It’s not even close.
The game scenes weren’t bad, and there was a decent job blending movie scenes and real video/images a few times. Unfortunately, this was not done enough to be an effective part of the movie. The most compelling photos were the stadiums and hostile road crowds the Syracuse football team faced almost weekly.
Regarding sports dramedies, The Express does not come close to cracking my top 10. In fact, it would struggle to make the list of top football dramedies. The movie wasn’t bad, but it very much had a been there/done that feeling. Josh Lucas’s 2006 Glory Road is a movie about integrating into an all-white team of players of color during the same period. Sure, it was basketball and not football, but it came first and, thus, is remembered more clearly. The struggles in The Express are real but not new. We’ve seen racially diverse sports movies. We’ve seen movies about stubborn coaches battling star players. We’ve seen movies about players struggling to overcome the odds. There are a couple of other storylines I don’t want to give away, which have also been played out on the silver screen. I waited for something in The Express to separate itself from Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, Rudy, Coach Carter, and many other sports dramas I love, but that moment never came. So, unfortunately, The Express will be lumped summed in that second, or even third tier, of sports movies that are alright but not overly memorable.
Plot 10/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 7/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 7.5/10
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
81.5%