Glory Road

Director James Gartner and writer Chris Cleveland recount the 1965-1966 season of Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) at Texas Western College, where he coached the first all-African-American basketball team to win the NCAA championship. The movie fudges facts (for example, it was Haskins’ fourth season at Texas Western, not his first) and deploys all the standard follow-your-dream sports-movie clichés (“It’s not about talent; it’s about heart!” is just one of Cleveland’s many groan-inducing lines). Gartner makes a hash of the game scenes and must resort to voiceover sportscasters to explain what’s happening. Earnest performances make it passable enough—that is, if you’ve never seen Hoosiers, Coach Carter, Above the Rim, Fast Break, The Air Up There, Space Jam—the list is endless.