Catching The Express
Written by Chriso, Tuesday August 18 2009
I missed The Express when it was in theatres in 2008.
There's a story there about how I was in the time machine, and missed most of 2008. A story for another time. So I was not going to miss it today, even if it meant taking a couple hours out of what is a beautiful beach day.
Instead, I chose to watch The Express on HBO, and do not regret the use of my time at all. The movie is an inspirational movie based on the true story of Ernie Davis. Davis was the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy while playing football at Syracuse University. But like any good sports movie, the story is about so much more than sports. It captures a time in American History when we did not live under the premise that all men are created equal, and makes you wonder about ways in which inequality still exists in the US.
Rob Brown (imdb link) plays the role of Ernie Davis. Brown played football at Amherst College, giving realism to the football scenes. Dennis Quaid is fantastic as the coach at Syracuse. Quaid has been in other sports movies, including my favorite, The Rookie (for more, see my article Everyone's Going To The Movies). One of my favorite parts of the movie is how the coach uses legend Jim Brown to help recruit Davis out of High School, then uses the same tactic using Davis to recruit his own replacement, Floyd Little. Davis hands Little a bottle and makes a point about how the bottle does not have any labels. He tells him that he never set out to be the greatest "negro" running back, just the greatest running back. The bottle also has great symbolism from an early scene in the movie where Davis is collecting bottles outside Pittsburgh, and his speed helps him escape.
Of course, it's based on a true story. Did the events actually happen that way? Nobody knows. I had a professor at BC who said "all stories are true, some of them actually happened". There are some comments in Wikipedia that some of the events in the movie around the 1960 Cotton Bowl may have been different in real life. (Wikipedia's articles on Davis and The Express) But this should not matter, because the truth is in the story, and sometimes that is more important than accuracy.
Sure, HBO on demand would have been good right about now, and I could have had the best of both worlds. But the movie finished. It was still a beautiful day. I went down the stairs, crossed the beach and swam into the bay, wondering ways I could change the world.
Tags:
Leave a comment
Not So Fast! To publish your comment, you have to login
Not Registered? Register now as it only take 20 seconds!
Click here to browse
0 comments