As most filmgoers have learned to expect, Denzel Washington usually triumphs in whatever role he chooses, but playing the Titans coach Herman Boone, Denzel thunders all the way to the hall of fame of hopes and dreams. In Virginia in 1971, as the first African-American coach of the first integrated football team, Boone steps up to the seemingly impossible task of overcoming prejudice between the teammates and other coaches. Essentially, Boone wants to have a winning team, but in his predicament, winning is not just an aspiration, but a demand of survival. If he looses even one game, he will be fired. In order to teach his students to win on the football field, he must teach them to be fearless victors over prejudice in their hearts and souls.

With Will Patton in the role of defensive coordinator and replaced head coach Yoast and the superb supporting cast playing the Titans with notable performances by Wood Harris (Julius) and Ryan Hurst (Gerry), Remember the Titans is stitched like a prized quilt. Every scene brims with and many scenes explode with either racial conflict, great football plays, emotional breakthroughs, or comic relief of turning a bunch of bullish, distrustful, racially antagonistic guys into a team. From one moment to the next, our audience rocked with cheers at the close-up intensity and precision of the plays, or sat back in teary-eyed awe at the story capable of chewing away the blindfolds of ignorance and prejudice until we were all delivered to a better vision of ourselves.

In a thematic statement "I was afraid, and all I saw in you was what I was afraid of", Gerry illustrates how far the clutches of fear reach, and what better stage to purge those fears than that of a high school football team and players who, for the most part, mirror the fears and insecurities of their society. Through their differences, colorful supporting characters fuel the dramatic momentum to the extent of turning every scene into a breakthrough in the quest for supreme athleticism as much as in the search for greater humanity. That we can ultimately use the game of football and its tribal scrimmage line of tangled bodies as a nursery that transforms the fear of difference into the unconquered strength of understanding, respect, and hope is yet another testament that greatness is often born in simplicity and game.