The Express

According to The Express, we can learn a couple things about Ernie Davis. He faced a great deal of racism. He could run very fast. He faced a great deal of racism. Then, he faced even more racism.

Based on the true story set in the early 1960’s, Rob Brown stars as Ernie Davis – the first African-American to win college football’s treasured Heisman Trophy. From nearby Elmira, Davis is heavily recruited by Syracuse University to replace the legendary Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson) and the Orangemen are considered a top contender to be the number one team in the nation, but coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) needs to find a way to harness Davis’s talents to help the team win, and keep the young player safe as they travel into hostile, racist territory.

I don’t want to make light of the topic, since anyone not wearing a white hood over their head realizes what a horrible problem racism is, but director Gary Fleder and writer Charles Leavitt (based on the novel by Robert Gallagher) sacrifice any deeper understanding of Davis, his life and his accomplishments to beat this idea into our heads.

In this way, The Express feels extremely old fashioned and one dimensional. It is a return to the biopic where our hero is a shining, God-like figure with no faults and overly simplified villains and obstacles that stand in his way. Aside from lightly examining his family life and presenting one obligatory scene where he meets the special lady in his life, Fleder and Leavitt avoid doing anything more than scratching the surface. Imagine if Ray left out everything about his private life to focus only on recording the albums or The Aviator left out anything about Howard Hughes’s descent into madness? See how boring they could be? That’s how boring The Express becomes.

Because we don’t delve into much else, Brown is sentenced to walking around the movie with a big goofy smile on his face and not many real acting challenges, and Quaid gives it the old college try as the wise coach who needs to expand his thought process. Both do what they can, but don’t get much to work with.

The Express is rated PG for thematic content, violence and language involving racism, and for brief sensuality.