Remember the Titans review

 Number 573 on the top 1000 films of all time is the biopic sports-drama 'Remember the Titans.'

Remember the Titans is based on a true story. It is set in 1970's Virginia. In an effort to successfully integrate the T.C Williams High School, the school board initially hires Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) to coach the black football team, before deciding he should integrate the black and white teams. He is aided by the school's former coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton.) Ryan Hurst and Ryan Gosling co-star.

Remember the Titans should have been like a shot of adrenaline, yet another painful reminder of the US's racial history where the audience are brought face to face with the country's terrible past. It should have been like a slap to the cheek. Instead it was like being tickled with a feather duster. There was no grit. No bite. Nothing beyond the lofty ideals. It reminded me of Crash and its over-simplified take on race relations.

I think much of this can be put down to how Remember the Titans was a Disney film. It suffered terribly because of the studio. As it was Disney, it needed to be a family-friendly story that stripped away all the nuance and hard-hitting social commentary especially on the topic of racism. Other than the odd racial slur, it felt like a coming-of-age drama with the odd song or too.

You can't really fault Denzel Washington for this. He did his best with a cheesy script, but he's been in much better similar films like Glory. Less good were some of his co-stars. I get that Ryan Hurst was young and this was long before his winning roles in Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead, but he was pretty wooden as the football captain Gerry Bertier. His romance with his girlfriend was pretty boring too even as we see her rejecting him because of how he embraces integration.

While Ryan Gosling was only a supporting character, I was expecting him to do more than just dance. It was difficult to believe that he would go on to become one of Hollywood's greatest leading men. But at least the Ryans looked like high-schoolers. Ethan Suplee who played Louie Lastik was the oldest sixteen year old I had ever seen. His receding hairline did little to help things.

As for the black footballers like Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass (Kip Pardue) and Jerry "Rev" Harris (Craig Kirkwood,) they were similarly under-developed and one-note. I think the script did a lot of their characters a big disservice especially when they should have been the main stars.

But we cannot blame the cheesy, over-simplified script for everything. Ultimately, this was a Walt Disney misfire - a misguided attempt to deliver what should have been a hard-hitting piece of social commentary in the cheesiest most sanitised way possible.