The Express

Really I think more like a 6.5 or 6.75 is a more appropriate rating. But it DEFINITELY deserves higher than the 5.4 it has now on this site! Wow, I was surprised to see such a low score. The movie is not the best movie ever, but it is good. The acting is stellar. The story is inspirational. It's a feel-good movie and it's family-friendly to boot, which warrants some kind of kudos in my book. I think the plot could have been fleshed out a little more, and perhaps a better writer or director (I have no idea who wrote or directed this by the way) could have brought more drama and impact to the script. But even with a mediocre script, it's a memorable movie. My criteria is this: if I'm thinking about the movie after I walk out of the theater, it's a winner. This story touched me and it was delivered in a way that hit that "special" place in my heart, and I'm not a pansy. So I say, give it a try. You won't be bored, you might not be thrilled, but you will smile and feel all tingly inside, and isn't that just about enough? I think so. See it.

Enjoyed the movie but for purist there were many factual inaccuracies. Syracuse did not play Boston College in 1959. The West Virginia game in which WV and their fans are portrayed as very racist was played in Syracuse not Morganton. In the Texas game of that year the score was never 15-14. There are others but that suffices. When a description is "based" on a true story it means not everything is necessarily true. Remember that as one videographer told me, "we are artists and entertainers and not historians!"

Loosely based on the life of the first black football player to win the Heisman Trophy, this follows a chap named Ernie Davis -- a name most viewers are unlikely to be familiar with -- throughout his school years. When he reaches Syracuse College, he finds he is one of two black players on his team. His coach is played by Dennis Quaid. The period was just far enough back in time that there were very few black football players, and in some states, blacks could not stay in the same hotels or attend social functions with whites. All of this is dealt with in a forthright manner, although some facts have been slightly altered to punch home the drama of the era. Quaid's coach is a gruff old man with a heart of gold, a role Quaid likely will be playing more and more often as he ages. You may not recognize many of the actors in this, but they are uniformly excellent. Worth a watch, even if you dislike football.

The Express is an excellent movie based on a true story about the life of college football hero Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. For those of you who haven't seen it I won't say anything else about the movie. Because The Express is one those movies you don't want to know too much about before seeing it. I'm glad I didn't know too much about it because I was very impressed with this one because the Express was definitely much better than expected. The film does a great job of making you care about Ernie and most of the other characters who may not be in it much but they make the best of their limited screen time. The whole cast turn in great performances especially Rob Brown as Ernie Davis and Dennis Quaid as his tough but sympathetic college football coach. The rest of the supporting cast are admirable in their roles too. Mostly everything in this movie worked from the intense realistic football sequences to the drama of Ernie's inspirational life. The pacing was a little slow at times but the rest of the film made up for it's one flaw. Overall The Express was so much better than expected and is a movie based on a true story that deserves to be told which is brought to life because of the exceptional performances by the cast. Well done.

In fact, I'm not a football fan, nor even a sports fan at that---this extraordinary movie would have slipped by me except for several reasons: One of them, my friend of some 30 years or so, Coralee Burch wrote a manuscript on the life of the protagonist in this story, real life college football great Ernie Davis. The years that she struggled unsuccessfully to pitch her script are still quite vivid in my recollection because for her it was a heartfelt labor of love. Ernie Davis, the first dark skinned winner of the coveted Heisman Trophy was to her a real life hero and she related to me more than once how he was not just a great athlete but beloved by everyone that ever met him, such was the greatness of his spirit…all of that despite the crushing bigotry that Davis faced coming of age in the mid-20th Century America and the brutal treatment and abuse heaped upon him from childhood. The second reason is the actor chosen to play Ernie Davis, Rob Brown. I first discovered Brown in his first film Finding Forrester (2000). He was selected to play the lead opposite Sean Connery in this small, beautiful gem of a film at age 16 and without any training as an actor yet held his own superbly against Connery. The minute that I saw the trailer for The Express and recognized Rob Brown I decided I would see the film, even before I realized it was the story about Ernie Davis. A curious coincidence as well, Ernie's greatest hero was Jim Brown, who played at Syracuse before Ernie and who went on to the Cleveland Browns once again followed by Ernie. Some of you will know the name Jim Brown because he has been an actor in Hollywood for decades. When I was in High School in Hicksville in the track team I recall quite vividly one day watching Jim Brown run a long distance race on the track leaving everyone behind as if they were jogging at a track meet with his High School, Manhasset. Although Jim was instrumental in inspiring Ernie, as it turned out Ernie had an even better football record than Jim in college and might have also matched or bettered Jim in the NFL where Jim is today considered a legendary player. It was not meant to be, however, Ernie Davis died at age 23 of Leukemia just after being drafted by the Cleveland Browns. To this writing I've read more than two dozen criticals on this film and although most critics liked the film not one grasped the meaning of the story. It was not a film about sports or football but about the triumph of the human spirit.

Before I write the review proper of The Express, I have something to nitpick: I know when films are made "based on a true story" some events are going to be exaggerated. Nonetheless, I expect most of what happens in those movies to reflect a certain truth and be as accurate as possible. So when I read here on IMDb that the taunts of the Syracuse vs. West Virginia game from WV stadium members NEVER HAPPENED and that the coach that Dennis Quaid played had actually worked near the surrounding areas, that marred some of the enjoyment I got out of this movie based on Ernie Davis, whom I actually read about in elementary school in a literature textbook during the '70s. I wasn't bothered by some other inaccuracies I read about, however, since many of them were more minor and therefore, doesn't ruin the picture for me. The performances of Rob Brown as Davis and Quaid as head coach Ben Schwartzwalder had me riveted for most of the movie and I also enjoyed Charles Dutton as Davis' grandfather and Nicole Beharie as Davis' girlfriend, Sarah Ward. The tragic fate of Davis in the last 15 minutes also was handled tastefully and reading about President Kennedy's eulogy before the end credits was especially inspiring. So despite my misgivings about the whole West Virginia scene, I'm recommending The Express for anyone curious about this nearly forgotten time in college football history. P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to read in the end credits that part of this movie was shot in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.

I grew up following Syracuse sports. I remember Ben Schwartzwalder being interviewed on Sunday mornings on channel 3 in Syracuse. The film was a disappointment for me. Have the director or cinematographer actually ever played football? The football scenes were very contrived and not realistic. As football movies go, The Express looks like girls' field hockey. The writing was corny. This story needed more of an edge, dealing with racial tensions and sports glory. It comes off as a made-for-TV movie of the week. Dennis Quaid, although one of my favorite actors, is miscast. Ben was a hard-nosed guy, Dennis is just can't pull off the scowl. As much as I thought I would like this film, that's how much I dislike it. By the way, how did the film end? I left early.

This film was not about Ernie Davis,this film was about Jim Brown. Using Mr. Brown as a source on this film was a mistake. The film save for a few notable scenes is mostly Hollywood fabrication. I pity Dennis Quaid ever going back home to Texas after his participation in this film! True facts of racism are one thing but to fabricate them for Hollywood are even worse. Read the true stories of Ernie Davis and you will see a much different person than the one depicted in this film. Ernie Davis described by teammates and fellow students paint a much different one than the one Jim Brown made up!Perhaps the directors should have just made a film about Jim Brown and his experiences with racism which he truly endured. There was none of the trash throwing, racism laced hate speech, and other racist events portrayed at West Virgina. There was a brawl at the Cotton Bowl in 1960 and Syracuse was asked to leave the after game awards ceremony but they went to the Dallas Athletic Club and had a great time according to players. Why does Hollywood always have to embellish the truth? If this movie had been about the true Ernie Davis it could have been a very nice piece of college football history! All of the living teammates agree this film was not the history or the Ernie Davis they remember! I believe them and the facts not this movie!

I'm old enough to remember both Jim Brown and Ernie Davis and really looked forward to seeing this film. Even my wife wanted to see it because she went to high school in Elmira with Ernie. And the reviews said it was a cut above the typical sports movie. Alas, it wasn't. Just about every sports cliché eventually appears. Further, the film is very slow and really doesn't show the development of Ernie. The movie has ambitions to be much more than a sports movie but doesn't realize any of them. You don't walk away knowing any more about what it was like to be black back in the 40's and 50's and what race relations were like. I suspect that this film will get to video very quickly. I rated this a 4 -- it's two hours of my life wasted.

Ernie Davis whom I remember as a kid as the most promising college football player of his time made quite the impact on the world of sports back in the day. But is impact during the Civil Rights era in which he played is equally compelling a story. Both are united here in a wonderful sports film, The Express with young Rob Brown playing Ernie Davis. Brown plays Davis well as the idealistic young kid who takes as his ideal Jackie Robinson and the significance he had breaking the color line in professional baseball. Black people were already playing professional football at this time also, but the sport was not what it is today or in fact would shortly become starting in the middle Fifties when Davis was in college ball at the University of Syracuse. A guy who had a lot to do with that was Ernie Davis's predecessor at the University of Syracuse Jim Brown as played by Darrin DeWitt Henson. Brown's place among professional football immortals is quite assured and he came to the Cleveland Browns with the reputation from college he more than lived up to. In fact it's Brown that Coach Ben Schwartzwalder uses to recruit Davis to the Orangemen of Syracuse. Dennis Quaid plays the coach and he gives one of his best performances in his career. In fact it's right in line with another football film Any Given Sunday where he plays an aging quarterback with heart and guts, but losing a step or two in the field. The film is about Quaid almost as much as about Rob Brown. The coach learns that he's living in extraordinary times for America, most extraordinary for black America. His players are not separate and apart from the social changes going on, they and the game cannot be kept in a vacuum. Proof of that comes when the Orangemen of Syracuse go south to play West Virginia and later the University of Texas in the Cotton Bowl which was more of a war than an athletic contest. Ernie Davis beat out Jim Brown in two special categories. He was the first black man to win the Heisman Trophy for Best College Football player and probably earned it by dint of the fact that he unlike Brown led Syracuse to a national championship. It was a fact the Heisman Committee could not ignore. The football sequences as in Any Given Sunday are done incredibly well, choreographed would not be a bad word to describe them. Davis did in fact say he would let his field exploits do his talking and they spoke loud and clear. I hope some Oscar nominations are in the future for both Quaid and Brown. The Express will go down in history as one of the best sports films ever done and it goes along way towards keeping the story of Ernie Davis alive for generations to come.