Movie Review Black Los Angeles

BlackNLA Movie Reviews

*****THE REEL DEAL: Reviewz from the Street*****

by Edwardo Jackson

BIASES: 30 (yikes!) year old black male; frustrated screenwriter who favors action, comedy, and glossy, big budget movies over indie flicks, kiddie flicks, and weepy Merchant Ivory fare

GLORY ROAD (PG)

MOVIE BIASES: Looks like "Remember the Titans" of basketball.
MAJOR PLAYERS: Josh Lucas (Stealth), Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher), Jon Voight (Varsity Blues), and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Remember the Titans)

I'm a liar (ex-girlfriends, calm thyselves). When I get those random invites you sometimes receive hanging outside Los Angeles area theaters to go see test screenings, I always lie and say I am not with the media or entertainment industry. I lie so I can see, if not help shape, what the filmed "entertainment" Hollyhood tries to foist upon us. Well, several months ago I saw a test screening of "Glory Road."
For the most part, Hollywood passed its test.

"You talkin' like Negroes are gonna be the future of basketball or something." For rookie Division I coach Don Haskins in 1965 West Texas, "Negroes" are. Landing a job in the barren hoops outpost of El Paso, Texas Western (now UTEP) Coach Haskins recruits seven African-American basketball players largely ignored by all the big (re: white) D-I schools to come play under his "no girls, no booze, no late nights" edict of fundamental basketball. Testing those rules as young men are wont to do are militant Willie Worsley (Sam Jones III), timid Nevil Shed (Al "Hits from the Street" Shearer), intimidator extraordinaire David "Big Daddy" Lattin (Schin Kerr), momma's boy Harry Flournoy (Mehcad Brooks), and charming rulebreaker/ringleader Bobby Joe Hill (Luke) to name a few. In the racially charged
atmosphere of the '60s when the college basketball landscape still resorted to tokenism for African-American athletes, Haskins starts three blacks the majority of their tumultuous season, during which the boys are forced to become men, integrate society much less their own team, and marry their flamboyant style of play with the autocratic nature of their coach. All this leads to the watershed moment of the national championship game against longtime NCAA powerhouse Kentucky and its unrepentantly racist coach Adolph Rupp where Haskins decides
to start five black players a first in American collegiate sports.

Based on the actual event, "Glory Road" IS a prototypical Jerry Bruckheimer production. Using slick game photography and direction of neophyte director James Gartner plus the dependable soundtrack of Bruckheimer repertory musician Trevor Rabin (Armageddon, Bad Boys II), "Glory" is a clumsy but endearing exercise in the improvement of race relations as historical docudrama. The Chris Cleveland-Bettina Gilois script veers at times toward the heavy-handed and obvious but it provides enough fodder for an enjoyably educational look into our country's Mesozoic era of tolerance that is not as ancient history as we would like to think. What the overall production is adept at revealing is the personal, social, and historical implications that can weigh upon two diametrically opposed basketball philosophies, two
sub-cultures, yet how exciting it can all be when those philosophies and cultures mesh together. When Lucas' Haskins is losing in the middle of a game while trying to execute his showboat-eschewing, non-flashy, traditionally fundamental style, he reluctantly unleashes his athletes' energetic one by telling Bobby Joe, "You play your game and you play my game." Boom! The advent of hip hop basketball in the
NCAA is (cinematically) born.

Following the "Titans" blueprint, "Glory's" cast is capable, appealing, and can actually play the sport. Standouts on the team include Austin Nichols' forthright farmboy Jerry Armstrong, the perpetually amusing Al Shearer as Nevil Shed, star-in-waiting Mehcad Brooks' (TV's "Desperate Housewives") henpecked Flournoy, and Derek "Just Roll Out a Ball or a Bike" Luke (Friday Night Lights) as the ceaselessly confident Bobby Joe Hill of Detroit. Josh Lucas, with a mild paunch and intense glower, does fine here. Using his native Arkansan drawl to good Southern effect, his Haskins instills fear, humiliates, and fathers along the kids, knowing that his career is in their hands as much as basketball and social history are, too. Could you imagine taking Ben Affleck seriously in such a role (as he was previously attached to the project but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts)? Insert cold shudder here.

What I am most pleased about was that, for a change, Hollywood LISTENED. When I saw this movie at the test screening, it was bloated at two and a half hours long, and I told them so on the screener card. Gone now are a pregnancy subplot involving Bobby Joe Hill's girlfriend Mary (Tatyana M. Ali), extraneous (if not visually interesting) game footage, and extended training camp sequences. Leaner and meaner, "Glory's" focus is more on the team and its crash course with history,
sacrificing little in the way of character or story.

Granted, this could be perceived as another one of those "Daring" White Guy Saves Us Po' Black Chillun flicks; it's not. Not only because it's a matter of historical record, but also because the pride, determination, and diversity that the actors transmit on screen is every bit as real and human as the real life people they portray. Does it drive me crazy sometimes to think that it was once considered
"progressive" or "radical" to think of black people (or gay people or other people of color) as people (three-fifths or otherwise) when that should have been the assumption from the start? Absolutely. Yet America's record of social barbarism needs to be reflected for us now and forever, so we may never return to a time where ignorance prevailed and basketball sucked. Hollywood still has a long way to go towards acing its test. But when I give "Glory Road" a passing grade, at least I ain't lying.

@@@ REELS
(THREE REELS)
It's pretty hot – go give it a shot.

Like what you read? Agree/disagree with The Reel Deal? Think he's talkin' out his...HUSH YO' MOUF! (I'm only talkin' about The Reel Deal!) Email him at ReelReviewz@aol.com!

Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com




			BlackNLA Movie Reviews ***THE REEL DEAL: Reviewz from the Street*** by Edwardo Jackson BIASES: 30 (yikes!) year old black male; frustrated screenwriter who favors action, comedy, and glossy, big budget movies over indie flicks, kiddie flicks, and weepy Merchant Ivory fare GLORY ROAD (PG) MOVIE BIASES: Looks like "Remember the Titans" of basketball. MAJOR PLAYERS: Josh Lucas (Stealth), Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher), Jon Voight (Varsity Blues), and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Remember the Titans) I'm a liar (ex-girlfriends, calm thyselves). When I get those random invites you sometimes receive hanging outside Los Angeles area theaters to go see test screenings, I always lie and say I am not with the media or entertainment industry. I lie so I can see, if not help shape, what the filmed "entertainment" Hollyhood tries to foist upon us. Well, several months ago I saw a test screening of "Glory Road." For the most part, Hollywood passed its test. "You talkin' like Negroes are gonna be the future of basketball or something." For rookie Division I coach Don Haskins in 1965 West Texas, "Negroes" are. Landing a job in the barren hoops outpost of El Paso, Texas Western (now UTEP) Coach Haskins recruits seven African-American basketball players largely ignored by all the big (re: white) D-I schools to come play under his "no girls, no booze, no late nights" edict of fundamental basketball. Testing those rules as young men are wont to do are militant Willie Worsley (Sam Jones III), timid Nevil Shed (Al "Hits from the Street" Shearer), intimidator extraordinaire David "Big Daddy" Lattin (Schin Kerr), momma's boy Harry Flournoy (Mehcad Brooks), and charming rulebreaker/ringleader Bobby Joe Hill (Luke) to name a few. In the racially charged atmosphere of the '60s when the college basketball landscape still resorted to tokenism for African-American athletes, Haskins starts three blacks the majority of their tumultuous season, during which the boys are forced to become men, integrate society much less their own team, and marry their flamboyant style of play with the autocratic nature of their coach. All this leads to the watershed moment of the national championship game against longtime NCAA powerhouse Kentucky and its unrepentantly racist coach Adolph Rupp where Haskins decides to start five black players a first in American collegiate sports. Based on the actual event, "Glory Road" IS a prototypical Jerry Bruckheimer production. Using slick game photography and direction of neophyte director James Gartner plus the dependable soundtrack of Bruckheimer repertory musician Trevor Rabin (Armageddon, Bad Boys II), "Glory" is a clumsy but endearing exercise in the improvement of race relations as historical docudrama. The Chris Cleveland-Bettina Gilois script veers at times toward the heavy-handed and obvious but it provides enough fodder for an enjoyably educational look into our country's Mesozoic era of tolerance that is not as ancient history as we would like to think. What the overall production is adept at revealing is the personal, social, and historical implications that can weigh upon two diametrically opposed basketball philosophies, two sub-cultures, yet how exciting it can all be when those philosophies and cultures mesh together. When Lucas' Haskins is losing in the middle of a game while trying to execute his showboat-eschewing, non-flashy, traditionally fundamental style, he reluctantly unleashes his athletes' energetic one by telling Bobby Joe, "You play your game and you play my game." Boom! The advent of hip hop basketball in the NCAA is (cinematically) born. Following the "Titans" blueprint, "Glory's" cast is capable, appealing, and can actually play the sport. Standouts on the team include Austin Nichols' forthright farmboy Jerry Armstrong, the perpetually amusing Al Shearer as Nevil Shed, star-in-waiting Mehcad Brooks' (TV's "Desperate Housewives") henpecked Flournoy, and Derek "Just Roll Out a Ball or a Bike" Luke (Friday Night Lights) as the ceaselessly confident Bobby Joe Hill of Detroit. Josh Lucas, with a mild paunch and intense glower, does fine here. Using his native Arkansan drawl to good Southern effect, his Haskins instills fear, humiliates, and fathers along the kids, knowing that his career is in their hands as much as basketball and social history are, too. Could you imagine taking Ben Affleck seriously in such a role (as he was previously attached to the project but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts)? Insert cold shudder here. What I am most pleased about was that, for a change, Hollywood LISTENED. When I saw this movie at the test screening, it was bloated at two and a half hours long, and I told them so on the screener card. Gone now are a pregnancy subplot involving Bobby Joe Hill's girlfriend Mary (Tatyana M. Ali), extraneous (if not visually interesting) game footage, and extended training camp sequences. Leaner and meaner, "Glory's" focus is more on the team and its crash course with history, sacrificing little in the way of character or story. Granted, this could be perceived as another one of those "Daring" White Guy Saves Us Po' Black Chillun flicks; it's not. Not only because it's a matter of historical record, but also because the pride, determination, and diversity that the actors transmit on screen is every bit as real and human as the real life people they portray. Does it drive me crazy sometimes to think that it was once considered "progressive" or "radical" to think of black people (or gay people or other people of color) as people (three-fifths or otherwise) when that should have been the assumption from the start? Absolutely. Yet America's record of social barbarism needs to be reflected for us now and forever, so we may never return to a time where ignorance prevailed and basketball sucked. Hollywood still has a long way to go towards acing its test. But when I give "Glory Road" a passing grade, at least I ain't lying. @@@ REELS (THREE REELS) It's pretty hot – go give it a shot. Like what you read? Agree/disagree with The Reel Deal? Think he's talkin' out his...HUSH YO' MOUF! (I'm only talkin' about The Reel Deal!) Email him at ReelReviewz@aol.com! Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com Â© 2004, Edwardo Jackson