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Remember the Titans is about the dramatic and impressive exploits of an underdog high school football team, the T.C. Williams Titans of racially charged Alexandria, Virginia (USA). It is 1971 and the racially mixed squad faces a formidable task. Alexandria, a bastion of institutional racism, has been ordered to integrate its school system of black school and white school. However, underlying politics can make of this integration a kind of paying lip-service to racial equality.
Remember the Titans is also about the personal drama of two high-calibre coaches: Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) and Bill Yoast (Will Patton). Boone is the first out-of-towner black coach appointed as head coach for the T. C. Williams Titans. Yoast is the local white head coach with Hall of Fame credentials who is demoted as assistant coach.
Boone subjects T. C. Williams Titans to a strenuous gruelling training at the game and
triggers a laborious breaking down of attitudinal racial walls between and among the players. A pre-dawn jogging through the woods to Gettysburg cemetery promises to be a
turning point.
Credit is due to Director Yakin with his skillful choreography of the ups and down of a sports
movie. The Titans are different: they are both black and white; they have an inner drive to win; they enter the football field/stadium to the tune of an upbeat musical
score with well coordinated body movements. Furthermore, the presence of Denzel Washington, a natural and accomplished actor who is allowed to give depth and complexity to his
character, is a big plus to make Remember the Titans a highly credible and enjoyable sports movie, placing it a notch above the average.
Moreover, its social message (even if it is soft-paddled) creates a richer fabric.
The best credit that can be given to the movie - based on a true story - is how it handles the
racial problem between the black and white football players of T. C. Williams Titans. Can racial preconceptions be done away with? Can high school students and even the adults
of the community accept each other for what they are and not for skin-deep affinity? If the answer is "Yes", then perhaps, the Good News of Jesus is close at hand.
(Date Reviewed: January 19, 2001)
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