It‘s a funny thing, schmaltz. As a diet, it‘s emetic but a little once in a while can be rather pleasing. It‘s especially easy to stomach when it comes served up with a dose of sports movie cliches and some good old fashioned illness.
The Express tells the story of Ernie Davis (Rob Brown, Sean Connery‘s Finding Forrester co-star), a poor kid blessed with extraordinary American football abilities. Offered the chance to attend New York‘s Syracuse University, the ‘Elmira Express‘ hopes to follow in the footsteps of All American Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson, who bares an uncanny resemblance to the great athlete-turned-actor Brown).
But as Brown found out before him, Davis has a hard time adjusting to life at a largely white university, with things getting even worse when he has to play in front of bigoted spectators. But by staying true to the lessons learnt from his grandfather (Charles S Dutton) and with the help of best bud JB (Omar Benson Miller) and Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid, apparently channeling Jack Nicholson), the kid with the fast feet strives to succeed like few black athletes before him.
And then he gets cancer. Yes, as well as a job lot of sports movie staples, Gary Fleder‘s picture filches several sickness movie stand-bys. In spite of this and an occasionally cloying score, The Express works remarkably well. A big reason for this is that, as improbable as it sometimes seems, much of what occurs here really did happened. Born with a stutter and little in the way of financial or educational advantage, Ernie Davis filled the boots of the mighty Jim Brown and became the first black man to be awarded the prestigious Heisman Trophy. To reach such heights, he had to cope with cat-calls, cheap shots, death threats and often having to stay in different hotels to his t
