Josh Lucas stalks the baseline like a salivating lion eyeing a hobbled gazelle on the prairie. He looks like a well-groomed Matthew McConaughey, but staring into his steely blue eyes, you'd think you just pissed off Superman. It is this intensity that Lucas brings to his portrayal of basketball coach Don Haskins that drives Glory Road throughout.
It seems almost impossible to make a good sports movie about a team without a riveting performance in the coaching role, and you can add Lucas to the list that includes Hackman, Denzel and Kurt. When he first takes over in 1965 at Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso), Haskins is given almost zero recruiting budget and even less of a chance to field a winning team in the football-crazed Lone Star state. So he drags the South into the modern world by recruiting poor inner-city kids from Detroit and New York. It comes off as ironic now, but one skeptic is genuinely surprised when he retorts, "You think blacks are the future of basketball?"
By now you may have guessed that Glory Road is the latest inspirational Disney based-on-a-true-story sports movie. They now include the four major spots (plus golf!) and have become so successful that a dog-sledding version (Eight Below) is being cranked off the assembly line next month. It is this attachment to formula that prevents the current installment from being anything exceptional, but we can either complain or admire the craft that makes this well-oiled machine run.
Sports movies are not about what or when, but about who and how. Even if the story wasn't based on historical facts, we know how it will play out. Some of these facts have even been glossed over in the movie, such as the knowledge that Haskins actually inherited three black players from the previous coach. The Hollywood version, however, gives us characters like Haskins and Bobby Lee Jones (Luke) that we can care about and cheer for.
The team of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and commercial director Gartner don't provide any new insights into the racial tension of the period, but give them credit for pushing their PG rating by presenting it in an honest and straightforward fashion. As we pan over to Jon Voight's coach Adolph Rupp and his all-white Kentucky team in the championship game, we see that he looks old and scared. The gazelle is about to fall.