Grade: B+

Verdict: Score one for Denzel's team!

Details: Starring Denzel Washington. Rated PG for profanity, mild violence and adult themes. One hour, 53 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: If Rosa Parks had had Jerry Bruckheimer as a creative consultant that fateful day she refused to give up her bus seat, he probably would've had her carry a bomb in her purse, just to make her point.

So what should we expect from "Remember The Titans," a movie that offers the unlikely coupling of producer Bruckheimer ("Armegeddon," "Con Air") and a true story from the civil rights era about a newly integrated high-school football team?

Well, expect a lot of action. As in, lots and lots of football. And expect the sort of rah-rah mentality that often fuels Bruckheimer's ballistic extravaganzas. But this time, the cheering is for a good cause.

The setting is Alexandria, Va., a generally affluent Washington suburb, in 1971. It's a place where high-school football is taken as seriously as, well, we take it here. The new wrinkle is integration which has finally hit the school system.

Beloved Coach Yoast (Will Patton), who's guided the T.C. Williams Titans to several winning seasons, is passed over for the position of head coach. Instead, the title - and the authority - go to an unknown from North Carolina, Coach Boone (Denzel Washington). The sticky part: Yoast is white (as was T.C. Williams High School pre-1971); Boone is African-American. The stickier part: though both men are qualified and, in their different ways, deserving, behind-the-scenes politics taint the appointment. As one school board fat cat tells Yoast, "Every head coach in the system is white. We had to give 'em something."

But the stickiest part is the team. Can the players learn to put aside their differences and come together as a team? (In an odd but well-intentioned bit of racial profiling, the movie shows the white players worried about losing their starting positions while the African-American players confidently proclaim, "From now on, the Titans are going to be powered by soul power.")

The movie's earlier scenes take place at training camp where, in the time-honored tradition of "The Dirty Dozen," the players are forced to room together, play together and learn to behave as if they're on the same side.

Thanks to enlightend leadership from both sides' star players, the Titans come to respect, and, yes, even care about each other (there are a few exceptions who crop up at well-timed intervals to remind us this isn't just a football movie). Unfortunately, their hard-earned one-for-all-all-for-one spirit doesn't extend to the community at large. Parents gather outside school opening day waving anti-busing placards in front of their hate-smeared faces. But then the TItans start winning. And keep winning. And the good vibes prove contagious.

Scriptwise, the movie is about a notch above "The Mighty Ducks." But the lack of narrative sophistication is overcome by the sheer force of the story. Bruckheimer's lowest-common-denominator mentality works surprisingly well here, making "Remember The Titans" a crowd-pleaser with a moral conscience.

The canny casting helps a lot. Washington can do this kind of role in his sleep. The thing is, he'd still be worth watching - even in his sleep. Patton, a proven character actor who's usually stuck as a villain, gets to show his more likable side. The key, however, especially for younger audiences who stand to get the most out of the picture, is the roster of actors cast as the Titans. Wood Harris and Ryan Hurst stand out as the team's leaders who set an example with their color-blind friendship. So do Ethan Suplee as a fat-boy buffoon more worried about getting into college than the color of his teammates and Kip Pardue as a laid-back, long-haired surfer from California whose lack of prejudice extends to gender issues as well racial ones (Pardue, a Brad Pitt lookalike, is an Atlanta native). Kudos also to 9-year-old Hayden Panettiere as Patton's gridiron-crazy daughter.

"Remember The Titans" doesn't strive for subtlety or complexity, but ultimately, that's part of its strength. This is a good-for-you movie disguised as a feel-good movie. And you know what Mary Poppins said about that spoonful of sugar.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service