Based on events from the sport’s 1966 NCAA season, the story focuses on the gutsy moves one determined coach makes in leading his interracial team to the final championship against the country’s top-rated contenders at the University of Kentucky.Ī position at Texas Western (now University of Texas at El Paso) looks like a promotion for Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), the former coach of a high school girls’ squad. Now in Glory Road, he hits the hardwood with a historical tale of black players integration into collegiate basketball. In Remember the Titans, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tackled the racial tensions that erupted on a Virginia football squad during the early era of school desegregation.
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Yet when they’re told with passion (and a great soundtrack), they are one of the movie industry’s most inspiring genres. The players and coaches of Texas Western changed the sport of basketball forever Glory Road accomplishes nothing.Sports stories, especially ones about the underdog, are as common as corn in Kansas. The movie is a lame-duck, but watching those men speak about what they fought for is something special. If you’re interested at all in what it was like to be part of this momentous event, stick around after the movie’s credits for interviews with the real players who were there breaking down barriers.
Instead, what we’re left with is an awkward grab-bag of mixed messages and mediocre on-court footage. Gartner never manages to balance the need to capture the explosive nature of the times in which Haskins is living, while letting us get to know and sympathize with his players on a personal level. Remember the Titans did it, Glory Road could have too. As a sports movie it follows the same predictable formula they all do, but its subject matter is such that it could have and should have used that to lift itself beyond that basic formula. In the end, I have no idea what Glory Road wanted to be, or what it’s trying to say if anything.
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Alright, maybe that was really his nickname, but do you have to shout it while he’s standing in front of an audience full of confederate flags? Just because the guy’s name is Adolph doesn’t make him Hitler’s step-cousin. But the massive, fascist looking banner sporting Rupp’s face that hangs from the top of his school’s gym is downright suspicious, as is an announcer’s obsessive predilection for calling Rupp “The Baron”. Oh, there’s a brief scene where his wife says “not everyone feels that way” in defense of Haskin’s wife, and Rupp never says anything even remotely racist. Glory Road makes the baffling decision to try and portray him as a Nazi, without coming right out and saying it. For instance Adolph Rupp (John Voight) is the coach of Texas Western’s big rival. When the movie tries for subtly, it’s usually only to infer something stupid. There’s no subtly to this story, it’s blatantly obvious, grasping for all the easiest symbolism to drive its point home. I refuse to believe this is actually the way it happened, and instead have to think that director James Gartner and screenwriter Chris Cleveland are simply off their rockers. What are we supposed to think about that? The Haskins in this movie did see color, and in the end knowingly chose to make exactly the social statement he said he wasn’t interested in, punishing his hard-working white players in the process. But don’t let him at the same time ply his team and the media with false platitudes that claim exactly the opposite. If Haskins wanted to make a social statement, fighting discrimination by proving once and for all that black players could compete in college basketball, then I’m all for it. He chooses to endanger the life of a black player with a heart condition, rather than allow one of his white players on the court. “I don’t see color!” he exclaims before intentionally benching all of his white players in the final game of the year to make exactly the social statement he claims he wasn’t interested in making. He makes grandiose speeches about how he isn’t here to make a social statement he just wants to play good basketball. Haskins himself is little more than a two-dimensional figure who stalks back and forth shouting orders. There’s some attempt to make a few of them more prominent, but it never happens and it’s half-hearted. You’ll find yourself thinking of them as the white kid with glasses or the black short kid. The players are never fleshed out much beyond their court presence. Neither Haskins nor any of his team is really well developed.
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