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Glory Road

2006, Movie, PG, 106 mins

Glory Road: Review

GLORY ROAD
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The main problem with movies that dramatize sports' greatest upsets, like CINDERELLA MAN and THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, is that the final victory is always a foregone conclusion. But in the case of the 1966 Texas Western Miners, whose story is told here with producer Jerry Bruckheimer's usual fast-paced gusto, the defeat wasn't simply one team by another but the perception of black basketball players as somehow inferior to their white teammates. After years spent coaching girls' basketball at a tiny Fort Worth high school, Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) finally gets his shot at taking a team to the NCAA championships when he's hired by El Paso's Texas Western College. That shot, however, is a long one: The all-white Texas Western Miners are so disorderly that Haskins' hire is contingent upon his agreeing to move his wife (Emily Deschanel), two kids and himself into the men's dorm, where he can keep an eye on his players. Plus, there's virtually no money available to lure any stars away from winning schools like Kentucky and Duke. Luckily, Haskins knows exactly where to find strong players who just might be desperate enough for a scholarship or the chance to play as a starter: The sidelines of other college's courts, where talented black players often sit while their white teammates are out on the court, and the streets and playgrounds of cities like Detroit and New York, where young black men who can't afford college play pickup games of street ball. Haskins' willingness to recruit black players, however, begins to raise eyebrows with certain college benefactors who believe that while they certainly jump and shoot, black players simply don't have the brain power needed in a starting player. Haskins and his team soon prove them wrong. After integrating his seven new players — including Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke), Jerry Armstrong (Austin Nichols) and Harry Flournoy (Mehcad Brooks) — into the lily-white world of Texas Western and putting the entire team through a rigorous training program, Haskins takes his team all the way to the NCAA championships, where they'll face off against the mighty Kentucky Wildcats, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight). Win or lose, however, Haskins has already helped change the face of basketball forever when he assembles the first all-black starting lineup in the history of the NCAA. Even knowing the outcome, sports fans will cheer the lightning-fast, dynamically edited on-court action — others may quickly find it all a numbing blur — that's only slowed by a few lumbering, heavy-handed scenes. The moment at which the baton is quite literally passed from the Miners white former starters to their black teammates is so earnest it's almost funny, and Lucas rarely breaks his glower to express anything other than tough determination. It's an attitude that's clearly modeled on that of storied Knicks coach Pat Riley, who, it so happens, played for Kentucky in that now-legendary final game. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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