Ernie Davis didn't carry a placard or attend sit-ins or register black voters in Alabama.

He became a figure in the civil rights movement simply by running the football better than anyone else in college.

The Express follows Davis from childhood to his early death from leukemia only a year after becoming the first African-American to win the coveted Heisman Trophy.

A blend of elements from Brian's Song and Remember the Titans, Gary Fleder's film is less about football than about mortality and race.

The Express begins in 1959 when Davis, a star of the Syracuse squad, is playing in Austin against a Texas team whose members can hardly draw a full breath for the racial invective they're spewing across the line of scrimmage. Then it flashes to Davis' Pennsylvania boyhood, where young Ernie outruns and outmaneuvers a gang of white kids who want to rob him of the returnable bottles he has collected.

Before you know it, a teenage Davis (Rob Brown) is attending Syracuse University. Football coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) wants Davis so much that he strong-arms recent grad and football legend Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson) into visiting the Davis home and clinching the deal for the Orangemen.

Charles Leavitt's screenplay (based on Robert Gallagher's nonfiction book) runs on parallel tracks. First there's the football career of Davis -- a sweet, quiet guy miles away from today's showboating players. He endured the racial slurs, indignities and dirty play (sometimes from his own teammates) with dignity, getting his revenge by being the best on the field.

The second track is his relationship with Schwartzwalder. Quaid is almost pitch-perfect as the gruff, old-school mentor who becomes Davis' surrogate father.

The relationship between coach and player has its rough patches. There is, for example, this taskmaster's prohibition against his black players dating white women. And when playing in the South, Schwartzwalder allows Davis to carry the ball into the red zone but pulls him out for the touchdown drive. He fears a riot if a black player is allowed to score against the home team.

Whether these practices make Coach a pragmatist determined to win or a white guy struggling with his own racist tendencies is a question The Express never gets around to answering. Common sense tells us both elements may have been in play.

Because it's got more on its mind than the usual sports movie clichés -- and because we know it's a true story -- The Express packs an emotional punch. It will make you care even if you don't like sports.

Cast: Rob Brown, Dennis Quaid, Darrin Dewitt Henson, Omar Benson Miller, Aunjunue Ellis, Charles S. Dutton.

Director: Gary Fleder.

Screenwriter: Charles Leavitt. Based on the book by Robert Gallagher.

Producers: John Davis.

A Universal Pictures release. Thematic content, violence and language involving racism, and brief sensuality. Running time: 129 minutes. Playing at area theaters.

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