Glory Road

In 1965, the coach of the high school girl basketball team Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) is invited by the Texas Western Miners to be their coach. Despite the lack of budget, Haskins sees the chance to dispute the NCAA and moves with his wife and children to the college dormitory. He recruits seven talented and rejected black players to play with five Caucasian players and formed a legendary team that wined the 1966 national championship against the powerful Kentucky.

"Glory Road" is an engaging film with a great message based on a true story. In a period when the racism was explicit in the USA, Don Haskins challenged many people with his team of black players implementing discipline and training and winning the NCAA against all the odds. The film shows the difficulties and prejudice the players were submitted and how they superseded all the relationship problems proving that they were equal to (or even better than) the white players. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Estrada para a Glória" ("Road to the Glory")

"Glory Road" tells the true story of Don Haskins, the basketball coach for Western Texas College, who in the mid 1960's, broke the color barrier in the NCAA by being the first to feature a majority of black players on his team. The movie chronicles the obstacles he and his players faced, as well as their ultimate triumph when the team won the national championship in 1966.

"Glory Road" worships at the altar of just about every underdog-sports-movie cliché one can imagine, yet the viewer can't help getting caught up in its story anyway. The scenes in the first half of the movie definitely have a familiar ring to them, as we see the coach first alienating his players with his hardnosed tactics, then winning them over by building comradeship and showing them how much they can accomplish when they work together as a team rather than as individuals. However, as with "Remember the Titans," "Glory Road" is more interested in examining the social background of its time period than in merely telling yet another sports-oriented David and Goliath tale. The second half of the film concentrates more on the overt racism the team members face and the surprising courage they and their coach demonstrate in confronting it (could this really be set a mere 40 years ago?). The young actors are uniformly excellent, but it is Josh Lucas as Coach Haskins who delivers the powerhouse performance here. And director James Gartner manages to keep the film moving at a fast clip, never allowing it to get bogged down in message-mongering or overt preachiness.

Almost in spite of itself, "Glory Road" turns into a genuinely inspiring story about courage and determination in the face of societal pressure and incalculable odds. And that's pretty much what sports stories, familiar though they might be, are really all about.

The true story of the Texas Western University Miners (now called the University of Texas at El Paso) who defied all odds in 1966 by being the first NCAA basketball team to start five African-American players (led by Derek Luke of "Antwone Fisher" and Mehchad Brooks of "Desperate Housewives" fame) and ultimately winning the national championship. New coach Don Haskins (played superbly by Josh Lucas, one of the most under-rated actors in film right now) has trouble recruiting when he first arrives, but finds players in places like Detroit and Brooklyn. In the civil rights torn south though, getting African-American ball players was highly controversial and even potentially dangerous. It ends up being fitting that the team would meet up with Adolph Rupp (impressive transformation as usual for Jon Voight) and his University of Kentucky Wildcats for the championship that year as UK was one of the last major colleges to integrate its basketball team. Socially important story and highly educational for youngsters who may not be familiar with the importance of this stage in contemporary U.S. and sports history. Great sequences and styles in the tradition of sports classics like "Hoosiers", "Remember the Titans" and "Friday Night Lights". 5 stars out of 5.

Whether you are a fan of basketball or not, this film touches on so many different topics. A show about real life, portrayed by some dynamic actors. Oh my, Josh Lucas, the coach was amazing on film as well as the "real coach" he portrayed. How wonderful he was to be "color blind" when coaching the game of basketball, down in the south where there was so much cruelty and prejudice.

This was a heartfelt movie where often, I got upset to see how cruel people would be to others, just because of the color of their skin. I am "white" though not white like this screen, lol, and raised in Los Angeles during the late 60's/70's and just never understood why people would not like you, without even knowing you just because of your looks/race.

Anyway, go see the movie, it is great! The beautiful tatyana ali who was on since a child Fresh Prince of Bel Air, I almost did not recognize her.....she did such a marvelous job acting in the role of Tina!

First off, it was just too similar to remember the titans, but I liked that movie two. The only thing that bothered me about this movie was that removal of some important facts.

Texas Western had three Black Players on the team already, upon Don Haskin's Arrival. Don Haskin's wasn't the sole person leading a movement to recruit black players. In their conference, they played many teams with black players.

Loyola-Chicago, while not fielding 5 black starters, fielded four of them and won the championship in 1963. So even though Texas Western was the first team to win with all black starters, other primarily black teams have won prior.

At the end of the movie, they talk about how people felt black players could never be as good as white players. Even as the movie shows, the all-American player they went against (I believe he was from University of Texas) was Black. The NCAA recognized that player as one of the best players in the sport.

Again, it was a good movie, but I felt a little let down that they manipulated the story a tad for the sake of entertainment.