Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7840 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-07
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Synopsis
GLORY ROAD is about more than a college basketball team in the mid-1960s playing its way to the championship: it is the true story of a coach and his team taking a stand against discrimination in order to play their best game. As the new men's basketball coach at Texas Western, Don Haskins has one goal: to win. At a time when most Southern universities had few black players on their teams and rarely played more than two at the same time, Haskins recruits an unprecedented seven black players for his team and often has three of them starting. His new additions have played on the streets of the South Bronx between breaks at a Detroit steel company, and added fancy moves with the hope of playing for the Harlem Globetrotters. In addition to adjusting to life at Texas Western in El Paso, the players have to integrate with their white teammates and face discrimination from all fronts: the school administration, donors and alumni, spectators, and random strangers, not to mention other basketball teams. To everyone's surprise, the underdog Miners take on team after team, making it all the way to the 1966 NCAA championships. In an historic NCAA final game against the University of Kentucky Wildcats, Haskins played the first all-black collegiate basketball starting lineup, in many ways opening new doors for black players everywhere. James Garner's feature film directorial debut has impressive performances, great basketball action, snappy dialogue, and just the right amount of humour to complement the seriousness of its main subject. Most important, it pays tribute to an inspirational team and its coach, capturing a moment that changed the sport of basketball forever. Be sure to stick around through the credits to see interviews with the actual team members.

Customer Reviews

''Let my boy play''
Set in 1965, Glory Road could easily be mistaken for just another triumphal basketball movie. Thankfully the film is so much more and most viewers be pleasantly surprised by this bio of the 1966 Texas Western Miners, the first college basketball team to win an NCAA championship with a starting lineup of mainly "Negro" players.

Josh Lucas - in possibly the best role of his career - plays Don Haskins, young and good-looking coach who spends much of his time coaching women's basketball teams. Suddenly given his shot at coaching Division I basketball in football-mad Texas, where part of the job meant living in the dorms with his wife (Emily Deschanel) and three kids.

Haskins is determined to build a winning team, but with pathetic recruitment resources, the coach is forced to use his imagination. So he tours Northeast ghetto playgrounds and ends up busing half a dozen African-Americans to the banks of the Rio Grande. This proves to be a culture shock on both sides.

The local whites and Latinos don't know what to make of the new scholarship students - some of them have probably never seen a black person before - while the Northern urbanites get their first tastes of deserts and tacos. Of course, there's some inevitable racial tension, but Haskins soon gets his white and black players working together.

There's no doubt Haskins is a tough taskmaster, and he hates to see the boys wasting time with wine, women and song. He also refreshingly acknowledges that he's not that talented and doesn't have all the answers. As the team rises in the national rankings, they are forced to endure racism and suffer various indignities especially in the South - from being pelted with food as they enter arenas to having racial epithets scrawled on their hotel-room walls.

When the attacks on them grow more vehement and even violent in their animosity, their morale is affected and in one near-brilliant sequence, the black players refuse to work with their white teammates, resulting in a rare, humiliating loss. When the Miners reach the final against "Baron" Adolph Rupp's (Jon Voight) Kentucky Wildcats, Haskins decides to make a statement by only playing the African-Americans.

The film has a great look and feel of the sixties, with Lucas perfectly cast as Haskins and Mehcad Brooks leads a solid cadre of youthful players who manage to both look convincing on the court and convey the mix of anger and enthusiasm that the youths felt. Although Glory Road is essentially a Disney Film, it doesn't shy away from showing the ugliness of racism and it's as much a civil-rights drama as a sports story.

There's a real the commitment to believability here and it's felt mostly between the interaction between the black and white teammates, whose path to total solidarity is more complex than merely learning to appreciate each other's cute little music. Although Glory Road is ultimately a C+ film, it is buoyed along by its earnestness and for the most part is pretty well executed. Mike Leonard September 06.

Fantastic Feel Good Movie
I have just finished watching a Region 1 copy and I just had to write a review. Although I was sceptical to start, as I am the least sporty person you will ever find, I must say I am so glad I watched this movie.
It centres on the year 1965, on this time in Ron Haskins(played by Josh Lucas) life as manager of a Texan Basketball team. He has just been recruited and it is expected of the team, called the Miners, to lose. However Haskins has other ideas and sees this as his big break. Once he realises that no self respecting white basketball player will join his team, he decides to recruit black players who, up until this point have been deemed by the majority as being too inferior to play. Although this does not sit well with the Dean etc, he does it his way with both surprising and dramatic conclusions!
Based on a real-life story, with very good DVD extras,this is not only one to watch, this is most definately one to buy!!

Another feel good Disney sports movie
Glory Road is a very enjoyable fee good sports film but is by no means a classic. It plays out as you would expect, but it keeps you entertained along the way. The acting and direction is solid. The chemistry of the teammates feels real and their interactions are always entertaining and compelling.
The star of the show is the story itself. It's an important part of the Civil Rights movement in America and a story few know. If the one thing audiences take away is the knowledge of what Texas Western did in 1966, then it has done its job