Riding The Sports Movie Express

By Dan Hudak      

A good bet for a sports movie, but the point spread is off.

The gruff, hard-nosed coach. The team (or players) nobody believes can win. Victory in the big game. The sports movie, from Rocky to Rudy to Necessary Roughness, has a tried-and-true formula for success, and The Express follows that formula point-by-point. Throw in the racial tension of 1950s America and you have an important social movie, as well as inspirational drama.

So yes, The Express is a good movie. But it was also good as a basketball story called Glory Road. Or another football movie, Remember the Titans. You get my drift? It’s done well and is a great story, but you’ll leave feeling as though you’ve seen it before.

The time is the late 1950s, and Syracuse University Running Back Ernie “the Elmira Express” Davis (Rob Brown) is one of the best in the nation. But this is before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s martyrdom.

And so Davis, who is following in the footsteps of Syracuse All-American Jim Brown, faces discrimination everywhere he goes. His coach, Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid), tells him not to date white girls and doesn’t let him score in the hostile environment of a road game in West Virginia. When they travel to Texas, director Gary Fleder gives us close-ups of the Confederate flag and shows all the black players bunking in the storage room of the hotel because only white people are allowed to stay there.

The racial elements are an essential part of the story, but what’s more interesting is Davis himself. Nicely played by Brown, he’s a polite and respectful young man who understands the situation but does not accept it. He dispels stereotypes through his actions, by showing people how wrong they are rather than telling them.

The film, which is based on a book by Robert Gallagher, is Davis’ biography, beginning with life lessons from his grandfather (Charles S. Dutton) while growing up in Pennsylvania, then moving to Elmira, New York, with his mother (Aunjanue Ellis) before heading to Syracuse. There he meets his future wife, Sarah (Nicole Behaire), and interacts with his white and black teammates. Some, such as lineman Jack Buckley (Omar Benson Miller), take more kindly to him than others — Bob Lundy (Geoff Stults), the linebacker he embarrasses every day in practice, isn’t his biggest fan.

While all the performances are strong, it’s Quaid’s that is the most complex. Schwartzwalder is a tough WWII veteran who wants to win games, but is also afraid of backlash for Davis’ accomplishments. One of the best transitions comes when Schwartzwalder realizes that just letting Davis play isn’t enough — there’s a bigger issue at hand, and as he takes action to push Davis to the next level, the film gets better and better. 

Too bad it could never evade the clutches of predictability. If you’re not already familiar with Davis’ stor,y there are some surprises here, but not enough to make The Express feel original. It’s a bit long, too, but ultimately worth seeing to admire an admirable man in a very difficult time.

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