Gridiron Curtain

Integration meets interception in Remember the Titans

Any Given Sunday (tell ya what I'd pay to see -- a movie where all the characters from Stone's movies get together at a church picnic for a friendly scrimmage: coach Gordon Gekko tells his team "any play worth doing is worth doing for money," but nobody can understand quarterback Jim Morrison's cryptic signals, so JFK calls for a preemptive blitz, after which Nixon demands to take a look at the tape, but Mickey and Mallory bludgeon him with the Gatorade cooler, prompting Sergeant Elias to call in an air strike...), then Keanu Reeves in The Replacements (Bill & Ted's Excellent Arthroscopic Surgery), and now this.

Actually, Remember the Titans isn't too bad, providing you're the sort who isn't bothered by the fact that Mauldin is an anagram for "maudlin." Denzel "when do I get to swap this lousy Golden Globe for an Oscar" Washington plays real-life coach Herman Boone, appointed to usurp local favorite-son Coach Yoast (Will Patton) after a black Virginia high school is combined with a white one in the troubled summer of 1971. (We had stuff happen like that around here, too; ask anybody who was at Berea how long it took the smoke to clear when they proposed changing the team name from the Bulldogs to the Black Panthers -- no lie.) He tells his players "Why can't we all just get along -- or you'll be running laps until Jesus comes." Coach Yoast pockets his pride and cooperates (maybe I should change my name to Yoast; it's easier to say than Windhorst, which is important if you ever accomplish anything of popular significance and crowds start chanting your name; "Yoast Yoast Yoast" has a natural drinking-game rhythm to it, while "Windhorst Windhorst Windhorst" sounds more like somebody hooked up the dishwasher backwards) because he's a nice guy, although his outstandingly annoying little daughter is almost as disagreeable as the players are until Coach Boone makes them all room together during summer football camp (not the annoying little girl) and then run across the Gettysburg battlefield at 4 a.m. The boys get weepy and wise up while "Peace Train" -- written by Cat Stevens, himself not tolerant enough to prevent his chiming in with the "Kill Salman Rushdie" crowd a while back -- plays on the soundtrack.

But "Fire and Rain" is playing when the academic year starts, signaling trouble. White players must choose between their new black compadres and their old racist white girlfriends. Coach Boone gets a brick through his window and learns he'll be sent packing if he loses a single game. Worse yet, the cafeteria stops serving ludefisk. By the time it was over I heard much of the audience sniffing back tears, and I don't think it was because of all that painful 1971 polyester on display. Me, I can't remember seeing a more poignant example of unwilling race-under-fire accommodation since Sidney Poitier was handcuffed to Tony Curtis for a prison break in The Defiant Ones.

Remember the Titans was produced by pyro mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, so I was surprised that none of the players exploded (they did make queasy crunching sounds though). Equally unexpected, although it was directed by Boaz Yakin (whose last film was Renée Zellweger's arty A Price Above Rubies) there were no dream sequences or extreme close-ups of fruit. I knew all along my emotions were being manipulated in overly simplistic fashion, but that doesn't keep me from smiling at the Michelin commercials with the baby in a tire, either. B-