Movie review: Glory Road

Movie review: ‘Glory Road' (Metromix.com)

By Michael Wilmington Tribune movie critic

"Glory Road," a stand-up-and-cheer basketball tale taken from real life, is a drama that, almost inevitably, falls short of its subject. But what a subject! This Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie re-creates one of the great, pivotal games of college basketball: the March 19, 1966, NCAA championship final match between Coach Don Haskins' upstart Miners from relatively tiny Texas Western College and the University of Kentucky Wildcats, a celebrated team boasting future pro stars Louis Dampier and Pat Riley, run by a storied coach, Adolph Rupp, who had already won the NCAA title four times.

It was a thriller-killer game, full of tenacious defense, ferocious jams, deadly outside shooting, great team play and, from first minute to last, a high drama beyond the contest itself.

The 1966 game became legendary because of race. Both teams went into the finals with 27-1 records. But the Miners were an all-black squad (at least for that one night, when because of racist attacks the team had suffered all season, Haskins decided to send out only his black players). The Wildcats were all-white and had been for all the decades of "Baron" Rupp's long reign.With that explosive cultural background--and with a deep cast headed by Josh Lucas as Haskins, Jon Voight as Rupp and Derek Luke as Texas Western's star guard Bobby Joe Hill--"Glory Road" seizes your emotions, fills you with feeling generated as much by the true-life story as the way it has been dramatized.

A quintessential `60s tale, set in the era of Vietnam War protests, civil rights battles and the Beatles, it's about underdogs breaking through and, in a way, about revolution. Lucas plays Haskins as a driven guy from a second-tier arena. (Before getting the job at Texas Western job, he had coached high school girls' basketball, then a career wilderness.) Taking over in dusty El Paso, helped by his assistants, slightly dorky Moe Iba (Evan Jones) and crusty Russ Moore (played by Elvis Presley buddy Red West), Haskins decides to win by exploiting the black talent that racism denies to some of the colleges--including most of the Southern schools--that he has to battle.

The first part of "Glory Road," very entertainingly, shows Haskins recruiting his team--including Hill from Detroit, the enforcer David "Daddy D" Lattin (Schin A.S. Kerr) from Houston, charmer Nevil Shed (Al Shearer) from New York City and Harry Flournoy (Mehcad Brooks) and Orsten Artis (Alphonso McAuley) from Gary--and it's surprising how convincing they all are as players. The bulked-up Lucas comes across pretty well as a hard-nosed coach (if not a very three-dimensional one) and there's a cornball pleasure in seeing the mix of black and white players (including Austin Nichols as defense expert Jerry Armstrong and James Olivard as the huge Louis Baudoin) bond with each other through Motown and slang.

In the latter part of the movie, when Texas Western begins to tear through its schedule, surprising and upsetting team after team, while undergoing racial taunts and jeers on the court and violence and vandalism outside it, "Glory Road" gets its hooks in. If you've seen "Hoosiers," another underdog basketball tale with a less scrupulous factual basis, you know the Cinderella guys structure. And you know the black-and-white sports bonding formula from that previous Bruckheimer football blockbuster, "Remember the Titans." It works again.

"Glory Road" is about how the freewheeling black street players on Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) outplay the more deliberate, slower white teams, helping change the very conception of the game. But producer Bruckheimer and first-time feature director James Gartner (a commercial specialist) sometimes get too fast, too razzle-dazzle and "showboat" themselves.

They're faking it, in a way; they don't give us enough contrast. Gartner's style is almost too brisk and packed, a post-MTV flash technique that doesn't let you relax into the characters. There are few more exciting games than the NCAA semifinal with Utah, or more significant than that last war with Rupp and Kentucky. But, in non-game moments, the movie often pours it on too hard. Some of the dramatic subplots, such as Haskins' home life with wife Mary (Emily Deschanel) and Willie "Scoops" Cager's health problems, seem raced through or punched too much.

Still, there are lots of good things in "Glory Road"--especially the games, the Motown-heavy period song score ("My Guy," "I Can't Get Next to You") and Voight's and Luke's performances. All the acting has charm and presence. But, though Lucas, Shearer, West and Kerr are also notable here, Voight's Rupp is the one performance that has real depth and surprises. Perhaps that's because, since Rupp isn't being celebrated like the others, the actor is free to be more ambiguous and real.

The movie's great end-title sequence redeems everything. Under the credits, we see and hear the real-life game veterans as they are now--including, movingly, ex-Lakers coach Riley. (The late Bobby Joe Hill is briefly memorialized). For those moments, reality pours in and humanity takes over.

The rest of the film tends to be a series of fast breaks that only score some of the time. But "Glory Road's" credit sequence is a twisting slam-dunk, a high-arching half-court swish shot. It's beautiful; it makes you remember stuff you should never forget.