Football drama a genuine inspirational tale
If you're looking for exactly the right subject for a genuinely inspirational and moving true-life sports movie, you can't do much better than the saga of storied Syracuse University running back Ernie Davis.
His short, spectacular life and amazing football achievements provide the basis for the exciting, sometimes deeply touching new picture "The Express." This movie, which stars Rob Brown as Davis and Dennis Quaid as his famed coach, Ben Schwartzalder, really lives up to its subject.
Following Davis from his hardscrabble working-class Pennsylvania schoolboy days, and very briefly through a nonpareil high school career in Elmira, N.Y., "The Express" mostly showcases the explosive runner's barrier-smashing exploits at Syracuse.
There, despite following another legendary Syracuse running back, the great Jim Brown, and despite a backdrop of '50s-style institutional racism and clashes with hard-as-nails Southerner Schwartzalder, Davis eventually helped take a national championship as a sophomore, won two all-American citations, and in 1961, was named college football's first black Heisman Trophy winner.
The movie rivetingly shows all that and finishes, very emotionally, with the heartbreaking close to Davis' story after he's drafted by Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell (Saul Rubinek) for a dream backfield with Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson) that had already inspired the flashy nickname "The Boys from Syracuse." "The Express" gets the human side of the drama: the ways Davis coped with '50s racism and defiant Deep South mores of some opponents, as in the movie's knockout high spot, a heart-pumping re-creation of Davis' great performance before a vicious crowd at the 1959 national championship game with Texas at the Cotton Bowl.
Though the story has been fictionalized, the filmmaking team, including director Gary Fleder ("Runaway Jury"), writer Charles Leavitt ("Blood Diamond") and producer John Davis ("The Firm"), have done their homework and really deliver the goods.
Sports fans should have a field day at "The Express." But so should many non-football enthusiasts.
It's a great story, on or off the gridiron.
"The Express"
Three stars (out of four)
Starring: Ernie Davis, Dennis Quaid, Charles S. Dutton
Directed by: Gary Fleder
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG. 129 minutes.