The Express
By: Amy Nicholson
Few genres are as formulaic as the sports flick: you sweat, you lose, you win. It’s the same template as the dozens of well-meaning period pictures about talented young minority musicians, debaters and athletes that get respectful reviews and vanish into the box office ether. But Gary Fleder’s biopic of running back Ernie Davis, aka The Elmira Express, the first black Heisman trophy winner, combines and surpasses both genres by virtue of its honest-to-gosh goodness. Davis (Rob Brown) isn’t portrayed as a particularly political man—in fact, he’s not much of anything. When his tough love coach (Dennis Quaid in a solid, unfurling performance) refuses to let him redeem himself against a racist team from West Virginia, Davis accuses him of not seeing him as a human, only tactics on a blackboard. It’s easy to make the same charge of Fleder’s film: Davis is a physically perfect saint. But despite the clear weaknesses of Leavitt’s script, in the film’s second hour the mechanics of Davis’ life seize the heartstrings. Touring the south with Syracuse in 1960, he had the hurdle of representing integration—and domination—when hotels still had the option of refusing rooms to him and fellow black teammate Jack (the always appealing Omar Benson Miller). On The Express’ IMDB page, some commenters are railing about the suspicious timing of a film about a black man overcoming obstacles a month before a certain man might win the presidency. (Never mind that the film was in pre-production months before he declared his candidacy.) If there was ever a sign that Davis’ story continues to deserve applause, that’s it. (Amy Nicholson)
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