‘THE Express” is a decent football movie, just about good enough to be the 40th best episode of “Friday Night Lights” . . . which has aired 39 episodes.
Rob Brown, a likable if bland actor with an eager apple-pie face, plays Ernie Davis, who shook off poverty and racism to follow in Jim Brown’s urgent footsteps in the Syracuse University football program in 1959.
Thanks to the gruff-but-fair-ness of his only mildly racist coach (Dennis Quaid, borrowing Kevin Costner’s look from “JFK”), Davis took the team and his own career to places where even Brown, whose number he wore, had not gone.
Lots of uplifting music and isn’t-this-dramatic camera work (half the games seem to take place in either total darkness or stabbing rains) take things exactly where you expect them to go, until a surprisingly effective and emotional climax. If you’ve got only one really good act, save it for the third.
Otherwise this is a zero-surprise story, strictly warm milk for the soul.
As a youngster being raised by his loving grandfather (Charles Dutton), Ernie marvels at the sight of Jackie Robinson playing baseball on TV – and just to make sure we get the point, Ernie’s reflected face gets superimposed over Robinson’s. During his rise, Ernie says things like, “I wasn’t running from, I was running to” (though it sure looks like he’s running from racists) and, “I know my place, gentlemen – it just may not be where you like it.”
Early on, we learn that Syracuse has never won a national championship, and that no black man has ever won the Heisman Trophy. (It’s sort of like when your girlfriend tells you she’s never been to Cancun for her birthday and never received a Louis Vuitton clutch for Christmas.)
The football scenes don’t burst out so much as unfurl, majestically. Ernie gets the ball, we go to slo-o-o-o motion, defenders flail, the goal line awaits. Next game, same thing. Pass play? Slo-o-o-o mo on the quarterback. The sna-a-a-ap. Ernie da-a-a-ashing free. The ba-a-a-a-all in the a-a-a-air. The coaches on the sidelines, the fans watching on TV, the quarterback again, the receiver again, the prayers of a nation, the making of history, the critic going out for a Coke and . . . . back, just in time to see the touchdown. Nearly two hours in, we still (apparently) need to be told that Ernie wanted to be “the best player I could be, period.”
“If you practice half-assed, you will play half-assed,” says the coach. This movie must have practiced half-assed.
It’s easy to applaud Ernie’s gridiron genius, even when it stretches credulity (let’s see, did he really get falsely accused of fumbling by a racist referee, intercept a pass and catch an 87-yarder – on consecutive plays?). But the movie might be a bit more interesting if Davis had more to him than simply graceful gumption and victimhood, and if the spaces around him could be filled with something. His girlfriend, for instance, gets about half a dozen lines and seems not to have been issued any discernible personality.
At times, the film even seems to bore itself. With lines like, “Don’t you let anyone steal history away from you” and, “In light of what’s going on in this country, do you feel added pressure to represent change?” “The Express” hints that it wishes it were about someone else.
THE EXPRESS
Scores a few points.
Running time: 129 minutes. Rated PG (profanity, racism, brief sensuality). At the Lincoln Square, the Orpheum, the E- Walk, others.