Glory Road (2006)

Directed by James Gartner. Starring Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Al Shearer, Mehcad Brooks, Schin A. S. Kerr, Sam Jones III, Alphonso McAuley, Damaine Radcliff, Red West, Evan Jones, Emily Deschanel, Austin Nichols, Jon Voight, Tatyana Ali. [PG]

In 1965, men’s basketball coach Don Haskins (Lucas) is hired to take charge of the Texas Western College squad, and he goes out and recruits a team of predominantly black players, unheard of in Division I collegiate competition at the time, and whaddya know—it works! Inspirational based-in-truth sports drama straight off the assembly line, it’s in the sports-overcomes-racism sub-subgenre (which makes sense since Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer previously teamed up for Remember the Titans) and “gets the job done” without doing anything all that noteworthy or memorable. Credit is due the filmmakers for making it more of an ensemble film than a coach’s story as he makes men out of his boys, but there’s not enough time or space to satisfactorily flesh out any of the characters—Haskins is shown as a determined but vague leader, and the players are a bundle of random traits. One indicative scene is Haskins’ interview for the job where he keeps getting interrupted when trying to explain his philosophy, as if the screenwriters either didn’t know themselves or didn’t much care; one indicative subplot about disinterest in personal lives off the court is a hasty scribble of a romance between player Luke and waitress/student Ali (according to the postscript text, it was a real-life relationship, but there was so little detail or resonance, it sure didn’t play as one). The on-the-court action is adequate, but there’s a shortage of drama for a team that found immediate success and was considered an underdog solely because they were “breaking tradition” by taking on perennial powerhouse schools. As such, antagonists need to be manufactured to pick up the slack, most notably in presenting Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp (so legendary, the school’s basketball arena now carries his name) as disrespectful of the competition, even bigoted. Sanitized, formulaic and forgettable, but unless you bleed Kentucky blue, it’s certainly not the worst sports movie time-killer around. Lone feature directing job for James Gartner.

48/100