Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Rivals Hoosiers, Jul 21 2009
Move over "Hoosiers" and make room for another great inspirational sports story for the ages and one that I remember from my teenage days: the greatest upset in a NCAA basketball final. The year was 1966 and the improbable victor was the little-known team called the Texas Western Miners and, the unthinkable loser, the mighty Wildcats from the University of Kentucky. This movie focuses on the life of newly-hired Coach Don Haskins whose only experience before arriving at Texas Western was successfully coaching high school girls basketball out in the backwoods. What this novice coach brought to this perennial loser of a team was the spirit to win and the wherewithal by which to achieve the dream. As the film points out, this gigantic commitment involved Haskins and school officials agreeing to breaking with the tradition of the futility of trying to succeed by repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Haskins's story is one of frustration as he doggedly tried to convince all those connected to the Texas Western program that victory was achievable if they had the courage to stay the course. What was the road that Haskins so earnestly wanted the team to follow? It involved including black players in the starting line-up at a time when white players dominated the game. This innovative move only happened because circumstances conspired to prevent him and his staff from recruiting up north during the 1965 pre-season. So the only thing they could do was tour the black ghettos of big-city America and attract young street players who wanted to elevate their game. A good portion of the movie looks at how Haskins personally challenged these players to work with their white teammates in pursuit of basketball excellence. It is the camaraderie emerging from his efforts to create a winning team that makes this story ideally suited for the big screen. In the end, 1966 became the pivotal year in which basketball at various levels changed forever: Texas Western reached basketball immortality; the NCAA began recruiting black players in earnest; indiviudal black and white players came together as a team; and Don Haskins became known forever afterwards as a titan of motivators. Great film because of its story and underlying message about the personal costs of living the dream.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
fairly low key,but a good movie(not preachy or schmaltsy), Aug 3 2007
i like this movie.it's a Disney movie,and it's also based on true events.for me,that likely means that some dramatic license was taken to make it more interesting for contemporary audiences.but the essentials of the story are true.anyway,the movie is also a Jerry Bruckheimer production.in my experience,most Disney(and others) movies of the 'based on true events' genre tend to be overly preachy and schmaltzy,when it comes to the inspirational aspect.but that is not the case here.yes,the movie is inspirational,but it doesn't overdo it.also,the movie is very restrained throughout.it's almost subdued.this being a Jerry Bruckheimer production,i was surprised,in a good way.the movie tells the story of a college basketball coach,who broke down racial barriers,and changed attitudes.i won't go into the specifics,but how he did this was quite daring and risky for that era(mid 1960's) in the U.S.i did say i liked this movie and i did like it.i actually found the dramatic scenes more interesting than the basketball sequences,which i found underwhelming,except for the last one.the acting was good all around,and the story was certainly interesting.For me "Glory Road" is a 3.5/5
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Retelling the story of the 1966 NCAA Championship in more black & white terms, Jul 8 2006
In the old Western Athletic Conference, the University of Texas El Paso (formerly Texas Western) and the University of New Mexico were paired up in the scheduling so that the regular season finale was usually the Miners coming to the Pit in Albuquerque to play the Lobos. So I have seen Don Haskins, a.k.a. "The Bear," sitting on the bench with his familiar towel in his hands a half-dozen times in person, and even way back when was aware that the guy had won the NCAA title the last time John Wooden had not with UCLA (just think, if freshmen had been eligibly in 1966, Texas Western would have had to get by Lew Alcindor's Bruins). "Glory Road" tells the story of that championship season and how Haskins was the first to start five black players in the championship game. That they were playing five white starters of Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats. The game is considered the most important college basketball game every played, and while there are those who will argue the point, this 2006 totally embraces the idea that this game was some sort of Emancipation Proclamation for the game.
Haskins (Josh Lucas), takes his wife Mary (Emily Deschanel) and young family to Texas Western so he can coach Division I college basketball (instead of a high school girls team). He starts trying to recruit players, but going to a mining college in El Paso is not appealing. But then, while recruiting somebody else, Haskins sees Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) come off the bench and run circles around everybody else. Everybody tells Haskins not to start recruiting black players, but he gets seven of them to come from as far away as Gary, Indiana and the South Bronx. Haskins gets them to play basketball his way (big time emphasis on conditioning and defense) and by the end of the movie they are playing for the national championship. The film makes it seem like this all happened in Haskin's first season as coach, but he began coaching there in 1961 (the team already had three blacks on the roster at that point, including future Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson), and 1966 was his third time in the NCAA tournament (with a NIT appearance thrown in as well). For a film that celebrates history, there are a lot of liberties being taken with the fact, and while I know this is always the case in films based on true stories, I really think they go a bit too far here.
This movie tells the story of the 1966 Texas Western team overplaying its social significance. Stories covering the game when it happened did not comment on the black versus white angle, and in interviews the players said they never saw it that way either. But that is all anybody is talking about in this movie. Ultimately, "Glory Road" made me think that the story was not that Haskins started five blacks for Texas Western, but rather that Rupp's Kentucky was still starting five whites. For a long time I thought that 1966 was the first time that half the players on the court for the NCAA Championship were black, but in the 1963 title game Loyola University (Chicago) started four blacks and beat two-time defending champ Cincinnati, who started three. Go back to the University of San Francisco in 1956 and Bill Russell's team had five blacks, although they did not all start. In 1958 the All-American team picked by the coaches was all black, and included future Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, and Elgin Baylor. So every time in this film that some idiot starts talking about how blacks are not smart enough to play college basketball game you want to ask them to explain the Boston Celtics.
Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight) becomes a problematic character because the story being told by screenwriters Chris Cleveland and Bettina Gilois really does not work unless Rupp is a racist (even if his wife is not). There are deleted scenes involving Rupp responding to a reporter's challenge as to why he does not have any blacks at Kentucky and in an elevator with Haskins where he admits perhaps the game has passed him by that run counter to the way the story is being told, so it is not surprising they are being cut. Still, you cannot tell the difference between Rupp being upset because his time is losing the title game versus Rupp being upset because he is losing to a team of blacks. Even if you see that as being insult added to injury, you have to admit losing is a pretty bad injury. But the way the story is being told it is impossible not to overlay racism over everything, even when one of the Miners goes out of bounds and ends up in the lap of the Kentucky coach. I sure got the feeling that I was supposed to think Rupp was offended by being touched by a black player, especially given how the scene is cut.
There is a notion of Texas Western being underdogs (remember, they are just a mining school on the Rio Grande), but the team only has one lost when they get to the University of Maryland for the title game. Actually they were ranked third in the nation, which is hardly underdog territory, but in terms of history Texas Western and Kentucky are clearly leagues apart. But then Haskins decides he has had enough of all of the crap he is hearing and to not only start five black players, but also to use only his two other black players as reserves. The real Haskins appears several times in the special features on this DVD saying that he just started his five best players, but that is not how the movie does it. What bothers me is that one of his non-black players, Jerry Armstrong (Austin Nichols), plays a pivotal role in the game against Kansas, playing defense and shutting down Jo-Jo White. Now, chances are this was made up, but a coach going for the national title does not want this kid playing defense against Louie Dampier or Pat Riley? I realize my problem is that I know so much about this team and that game to begin with, but even within the context of the film they are overdoing it here.
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