Remember the Titans

This is certainly full of worthy thoughts and intentions; but, in the end, Americans just don't seem to understand that American football seems as bizarre to most of the world as Eton Fives.

Inspiring football drama brings history to life.

Maybe it's all true. But one is always a little discomfited when life, or a movie, imitates weary melodramatic patterns this slavishly.

The leads, Denzel Washington and particularly Will Patton, are so good they occasionally make you forget the material is shameless.

The emphasis on the players' developing mutual trust, is absorbing to watch and cleanly directed.

The result is the sort of deeply massaged truth that isn't stranger than fiction -- it's worse than fiction.

Every lad is a stereotype, every sporting cliché is trundled out.

It’s one of Washington’s better performances, one that saw him embody the spirit of Boone’s mission with the kind of show-stopping gravitas that’s made the actor such a force.

The beating heart of the story is still powerful and pertinent which makes this film not only highly watchable entertainment but a thought-provoking (and hopefully in some ways enlightening) crowdpleaser.

So don't bring along your binoculars, folks, because you will be able to spot what is coming from some distance away.