Glory Road
Starring: Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Mehcad Brooks, Emily Deschanel, Al Shearer, Tatyana Ali, Jon Voight
Directed by: James Gartner

Released in the US: Jauary 13th, 2006
Released in the UK: Unknown 2006

Reviewed by: The Boneman, ZBoneman.com

One of the hardest things to believe about Glory Road is that Jerry Bruckheimer hasn’t already produced a movie entitled Glory Road - I mean what are the chances? Generally I tend to avoid sports films, because of a basic aversion I have to unrealistic looking play. From Ronald Reagan mowing down big league sluggers with slow, looping floaters, to Rocky Balboa’s head popping back while he takes twenty straight jabs with his guard down around his waist, then rebounding with 10 straight left hooks that land right on the money. Most people point to the boxing choreography in the Rocky movies as being pure ballet, personally I thought it was pure bull----. I’m a tough sale when it comes to sports realism.

Did I have problems with Glory Road? Big time. The championship game was laughably rife with hot-dogging stuff that just didn’t exist in 1966. Reverse dunks, behind the back passes and, wouldn’t you know it, the winning bucket is an alley-oop slam off the backboard. I’m not a total fuddy duddy, but in a movie that is supposed to “represent,” a time period of great importance in our cultural development - I think “period detail” should have been observed, not Bruckheimered into oblivion. Glory Road has it's moments, but it could have been a great film, maybe even an important one, had the material been treated with some respect, instead of blatant target-audience pandering. It is, after all, based on a true story.

Perhaps I have no right to complain about this, given that I went into the film knowing full well it was a Bruckheimer production, I suppose I should be grateful that the backboard didn’t explode. Alas Bruckheimer can only be blamed for some of the film’s shortcomings - Glory Road mostly loses it's way in a morass of mediocre writing, innumerable sports clichés, and enough soap box speachifying platitudes for 10 sports movies. Josh Lucas as maverick coach Don Haskins is mostly effective and does the best he can with the material he's given to work with. He manages to keep a straight face while spouting off one lame coachism after another. When one kid talks about quitting the team, Lucas fires back, “If you quit now, you’ll quit every day for the rest of your life.” And your car will always make that funny hissing noise and never get decent gas mileage even on the highway. Okay so I added the bit about the car, but when your mind begins to play games like this, it’s a sure fire sign that you’re not watching a classic.

Glory Road now that I’m already halfway down it, tells the story of Coach Don Haskins who is so hell-bent on putting together a winning program that he heads to the urban playgrounds of Detroit and New York to recruit the kind of talent he thinks he can do it with. Of course they all happen to be black, and though it seems hard to believe, as recently as 1966 having more than one or two blacks on your team was awfully suspect - particularly at Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso). Obviously the line “How do you expect to win basketball games with a team full of Negroes” is going to fetch a big laugh, but in the context of the era, it wasn’t a joke, it was a pointed question asked by a deadly serious group of rabid local boosters. So imagine their dismay when after the final cut is announced only 5 of the 12 players are WHITE?

With the makings of such a compelling story, not to mention the fact that this squad would go on to be the first team in history to win the NCAA championship with an all-black starting line-up, it really is a shame that this film was placed in the hands of a first time director (James Gartner) who was just flat unable to make the emotional impact of the material resonate beyond the obvious clichés.

The acting was perfectly fine, there just wasn’t much of it to be done. Only one or two of the players are given enough character individuality to stand out from the others. I would have liked to see these young men contend with the bitter and constant racial hatred, not only from the townsfolk but from their white teammates, instead of dwelling on the beyond-trite cutesy exchange of cross-cultural lessons and characteristics from black to white.

This event was an tremendously important stepping stone on the road to racial tolerance and the film could have done a much better job of getting the message across. Unfortunately it all gets mushed-up and diluted into a Disneyfied fairy tale that is so inauthentic that to call it cliché is doing it more justice than it deserves. The film quite simply trades a genuinely fascinating and poignant human story for a lot of silly grandstanding. Not only does Glory Road fail to represent but it’s misrepresentation is ridiculously unnecessary. The film would have been all the richer and more compelling had the letter of the story been more accurately observed. Glory Road could have strolled off into the sunset every bit as jubilantly - with everyone heartened, uplifted, better educated and just as entertained.

Grade: C