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Rob Brown as college football hero
Ernie Davis |
Outsider’s story snatches defeat from victory
THE EXPRESS
Directed by Gary Fledler
Certificate PG
SPORTS films are a tricky genre for directors to get right. They always seem to be about someone (or something – think Seabiscuit) overcoming the odds to achieve greatness.
And far too often this means they trip over themselves with navel-gazing tosh.
Should they ham it up and not take themselves to seriously, like Escape To Victory? Or do they hope viewers are ready to be suckered with some grotesque life-affirming bile, like Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams?
The Express, which tells the true story of American footballer Ernie Davis, is in the second camp; it is a fondue of a flick that has a potentially great story lurking beneath. Sadly, it suffers from a surfeit of cheesiness which makes it almost unwatchable in parts.
Davis had to fight racism to achieve his potential. Born in 1939 in a coal mining area of Pennsylvania, he overcame tremendous odds to become a hero of college football leagues, and was the pick of the draft for professional teams when he completed his degree. His story has the lot – political struggle at a crucial period of the civil rights movement, fighting against the odds, and personal tragedy. But this film of his life fails to reach the required heights.
Rob Brown as Ernie looks the part but the trials he faces are not written in a way that allows him to express any real pain at what he had to face.
Dennis Quaid plays hard-nosed coach Ben Schwartzwalder, but his chiselled face seems stuck in one frowned expression throughout, saying that although the boy’s skin colour is wrong, ultimately he doesn’t care because he’s good at playing catch.
Director Gary Fledler plays each scene like a slow-burning tragedy, with a telegraphed happy ending: each ends with a dramatic set piece, accompanied with suitable music, much chest-beating, hand-wringing and fist-pumping.
It is schmaltzy nonsense and at more than two hours, it becomes a trial to sit through it.
Many sports films suffer from the fact that you are treated to lots of arty, headache-inducing slow-mo footage with the goodies snatching victory from defeat.
The Express takes us through a season of such stuff, and I imagine for the confirmed American football fans over the ocean, lots of bone-crunching footage may be in some way gratifying – but to us Limeys, its as painful as playing the game itself. |
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