Ernie Davis (Rob
Brown) had to overcome some very humble roots on his way
to gridiron greatness, having been raised in rural
Pennsylvania by his grandparents until the age of 12. During
those formative years, he forged a very close bond with the
man he called Pops (Charles S. Dutton), a coal miner who
instilled both a solid work ethic and a quiet sense of
dignity in his impressionable young grandson. Those
character traits would prove to be priceless to Ernie in
scaling the obstacles he would encounter just because he was
born black in an age when intolerance and segregation were
the order of the day.
By the time his widowed mother (Elizabeth Shivers)
remarried and regained custody of her son, he had apparently
already developed not only the steely resolve to be the
best, but also the temperament to test the country’s
color-coded discrimination wherever he encountered it. Both
his athletic prowess and his yearning for equality are the
subject of The Express, a bittersweet bio-pic based on the
best-selling biography of the same name by Robert C.
Gallagher. The title comes from the nickname Ernie earned in
high school in upstate New York, where he was dubbed “The
Elmira Express” because of his considerable feats on the
football field as a running back.
Following in the footsteps of the legendary Jim Brown
(Darrin Dewitt Henson) to Syracuse University, he went on to
eclipse his predecessor, leading their alma mater to a
national championship while becoming the first
African-American to win the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s
best football player. Though drafted by the Cleveland
Browns, the glory was not to last, as Ernie would succumb to
leukemia at the tender age of 23 without ever having a
chance to play in the NFL.
Directed by Gary Fleder, The Express does an excellent
job of chronicling each of the critical touchstones in the
abbreviated life of a role model worthy of emulation,
whether he’s being refused accommodations in the South at a
“White Only” hotel or being threatened on account of his
skin color by fans from an opponent’s school. Considerable
credit must go to Rob Brown for his convincing depiction of
the film’s ill-fated hero as an endearing combination of
integrity, vulnerability and sheer guts. Equally-effective
are stellar support performances turned in by Omar Benson
Miller as his teammate/buddy, Jack Buckley, and by Dennis
Quaid as Syracuse Coach Ben Schwartzwalder.
Another plus is the magical production’s recreation of
the period via an appropriately retro musical score along
with fitting backdrops, wardrobes, mannerisms and slanguage
from the bygone era via painstaking attention to detail
which only add to the picture’s palpable sense of realism.
In sum, The Express amounts to a fine addition to the recent
genre of socially-conscious sports flicks (ala Glory Road,
The Great Debaters and Meet the Titans) which highlight
individual triumphs not merely in and of themselves, but for
the collective meaning of those historic moments to the
masses of black people ever in search of civil rights.
