Remember The Titans

(PG, 113 minutes)

A TRUE story is given a Walt Disney overhaul as American Football becomes a force for healing in Virginia in 1971.

This was the year when black and white were united, their segregated education system brought to an end by the schools board enforcing the establishment of the first integrated high school in Alexandria.

As Remember The Titans recalls it, part of the new race-relations revolution involves ace black coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) being put in charge of the Titans team in a piece of positive discrimination. Previously the team was the all-white preserve of Bill Yoast (Will Patton), a respected senior coach on the cusp of being welcomed into the Hall Of Fame but now usurped as head coach.

Predictably, at the summer training camp, black and white initially stay apart, divided by deep-seated prejudices and suspicions. However, Boone's tough regime - aided by Yoast staying on board as a more kindly support figure - gradually breaks down barriers once he orders the players to mix, one to one, to learn about each other.

Yet all around them, in Alexandria, at the school, at other schools, racism is rife and the passage of the mixed-race Titans towards their state championship final takes on a crusading zeal, driven by mutual trust, respect and eyebrow-raising pre-game rituals.

Being a Disney movie, the tone is too reminiscent of a sermon; the language, even on the sports field, is impossibly clean, and the coaches' squeaky daughters keep interfering in the flow of the hackneyed story. No sporting, high-school or racial clich is left unexplored, be it the bonding team talk on the misty site of the battle of Gettysburg, the underdog having its day, or the personal ordeals of players from differing backgrounds.

The presence of action-movie commando Jerry Bruckheimer as producer ensures that first-time director Boaz Yakin brings blockbuster adrenaline, guts and high drama to the crisply-executed sporting sequences, and Denzel Washington is an inspirational figure, as so often, in a typical role as decent chap on a mission for change.

Remember The Titans is emotional Hollywood film-making writ large, a very American movie, a very Disney message movie, as excitable as Sky Sports coverage and almost as loud. The next one will be along shortly: raise the Stars And Stripes for another tale of racial change in the navy diving drama Men Of Honour.