Against all odds, an underdog sports team has a crack at winning a major championship. We've certainly been down this road before.
To the credit of everyone involved with Disney's Glory Road, all things familiar still become exhilarating and inspirational.
In 1966, Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), the coach of a girls' high school basketball team, was hired to coach Texas Western's boys' team.
Texas Western was in the basement of its league and Haskins was determined to change that.
He recruited an unheard-of seven African-American
students from as far away as New York to be on the team -- and then included them on the starting lineup.
Not only had this never been done but, to many racist sports fans and coaches, it was deemed an affront .
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer gave us the same movie in 2000 with Remember the Titans, the true story of a racially integrated high school football team.
Many of the same themes that work so effectively in Glory Road made Dennis Quaid's baseball flick The Rookie and Samuel L. Jackson's Coach Carter powerful sports flicks.
They work each time out because all three are based on true stories, so they have a built-in disbelief factor.
It really does seem impossible that the ragtag players could be turned into a winning team.
In each case it's as much the determination of the coach as it is the talent of the player that make the progress possible and painful.
The coach pushes his players harder than it seems necessary or ethical but it's what makes each young man realize and achieve his potential.
As Haskins, Lucas has a really nice edge that provides some of the best humour in the film -- as well as some of the best drama.
To motivate one student to study, Haskins brought in the boy's mother who attended classes with her son.
He kicked another student off the team for being afraid of being hurt, forcing the boy to assert himself more, on and off court.
Emily Deschanel has the thankless role of the coach's understanding wife and Jon Voight the scene-stealing turn as the pompous coach of the all-star team.
Bruckheimer knows it's important to put strong actors in these kind of supporting roles to make the story grittier and more realistic.
More importantly, Bruckheimer knows how to stack the cinema team with as much talent as Haskins did his real team.
Mehcad Brooks as the forward more afraid of his mother than his coach, Al Shearer as the forward who has to learn to assert himself, Derek Luke as show-off guard and Shin A.S. Kerr as the centre with a heart defect, all shine in key moments of pathos and comedy and are just as convincing in the exciting game recreations.
James Gartner's direction, coupled with Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois' screenplay, makes certain we care enough about Haskins and his players that we end up cheering them on each step of the amazing journey.
(This film is rated PG)
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