Movie Review of Remember the Titans

Movie Review of Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans is based on the true story of the T. C. Williams High School football team as well as their challenge to accept integration on and off the football field. It is a good movie that has a moving plot, a historical setting, and an excellent cast of characters. In the previous years, T. C. Williams High School football was under the leadership of head coach, Bill Yoast. Everyone in the town thought it would always be that way, until one day news got around town that with the desegregation of the school the football staff would also be affected. This point of the movie introduces the new and motivated head coach, Herman Boone, who is an African-American. This change of coaches leaves the town in an uproar because now Yoast is the assistant instead of the head coach. With the personnel shift also comes the change of student leadership. Each football team, white and black, had their own football captain. When the teams converge, tension builds up between the two captains, Gerry and Julius, because each wants to lead the team.

Remember the Titans is a movie that depicts the real-life story of desegregation in Virginia’s, T. C. Williams High School. The integration of the high school also includes the integration of their school’s football team, which does not go well with the townspeople. The previous coach, Bill Yoast, gets replaced by an African-American

coach, Herman Boone, who is strict and forces all of his football players to get along. The main character, Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) is a very talented coach. The other character who stole the screen next to Boone is Sheryl Yoast (Hayden Panettiere), who is the young daughter of Coach Yoast. With time the boys, black and white, get along and play football like a team. They come to overlook their skin colors and look at each other as people. The movie takes place in the small town of Alexandria, Virginia in the early 1970s. During this time in America, racial tension was high and more and more schools were integrating at an unanticipated rate. At the beginning of the movie, all of the school’s football players attend a football camp away from their hometown. After camp is over, they all go back to their homes and begin the school year together.

There are three major themes in Remember the Titans: racial acceptance, friendship, and football. Racial acceptance is the primary focus of the movie. It tells of the trials and triumphs that looking past skin color can really make. The one major friendship that is so remarkable in Remember the Titans, is the friendship between rivals and team captains, Gerry and Julius. At first, they do not even want to hear what the other has to say, but through time, they understand that conflict does not help, it only

hurts. The last and most obvious theme in the movie is of course, football, football, and more football. The director showed the audience a real-life version of how high school athletes and athletics really operate.

With time, the integration of the school becomes easier, but things basically remain the same. Even though T. C. Williams High School integrates, the town of Alexandria is not fond of the whole integration. The townspeople still act as if the

school’s integration never happened. Some examples of the town’s racism include when Gerry’s girlfriend does not want to shake hands with or even meet with Gerry’s new African-American friend and teammate, Julius. Another racist event that happened in the movie was when someone threw a brick into Coach Boone’s living room window. The most common racist scene that happened in the movie and sadly still happens in some places today was when a restaurant refused service to the African-American football

players. Most of these happenings do not happen today, but they were a major part of the plot in Remember the Titans.

I interpreted the movie in three main areas; racial tolerance, morals learned from my viewing, and the relationship between the two coaches’ daughters. In the small town of Alexandria, Virginia, racial relations were very shaky. No one trusted or treated African-American’s equally. Then out of the blue, the townspeople were forced to go to school, play sports, and be coached by people of a different race. The townspeople were appalled. I think that the townspeople acted like every other group of Caucasian people of the time period. Before desegregation, people thought it was right and normal for others of different races to be separate, and when someone