Ernie Davis is 10 years old in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He stutters but runs really fast. He lives with his grandfather Pops (Charles S. Dutton). His mother Marie Davis returns telling him that she's remarried. They move to the white town of Elmira, NY. Years later, Syracuse University football head coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) is looking to replace Jim Brown who has just signed with the Browns. With Jim Brown's help, he signs the wide-eyed Davis (Rob Brown) who would go on to become the first negro to win the Heisman Trophy.

This is a functional biopic taking on all the familiar ideas. It is beautifully shot. Rob Brown has a wide-opened personality with his bright-eye performance. The biggest problem for me is that the movie recruits the audience with a more interesting character in Jim Brown. I can't help but think that Jim Brown has the more compelling story. There isn't anything wrong but there isn't necessarily anything new. It's a workmanlike effort.

Before I write the review proper of The Express, I have something to nitpick: I know when films are made "based on a true story" some events are going to be exaggerated. Nonetheless, I expect most of what happens in those movies to reflect a certain truth and be as accurate as possible. So when I read here on IMDb that the taunts of the Syracuse vs. West Virginia game from WV stadium members NEVER HAPPENED and that the coach that Dennis Quaid played had actually worked near the surrounding areas, that marred some of the enjoyment I got out of this movie based on Ernie Davis, whom I actually read about in elementary school in a literature textbook during the '70s. I wasn't bothered by some other inaccuracies I read about, however, since many of them were more minor and therefore, doesn't ruin the picture for me. The performances of Rob Brown as Davis and Quaid as head coach Ben Schwartzwalder had me riveted for most of the movie and I also enjoyed Charles Dutton as Davis' grandfather and Nicole Beharie as Davis' girlfriend, Sarah Ward. The tragic fate of Davis in the last 15 minutes also was handled tastefully and reading about President Kennedy's eulogy before the end credits was especially inspiring. So despite my misgivings about the whole West Virginia scene, I'm recommending The Express for anyone curious about this nearly forgotten time in college football history. P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to read in the end credits that part of this movie was shot in my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.

Ernie Davis whom I remember as a kid as the most promising college football player of his time made quite the impact on the world of sports back in the day. But is impact during the Civil Rights era in which he played is equally compelling a story. Both are united here in a wonderful sports film, The Express with young Rob Brown playing Ernie Davis.

Brown plays Davis well as the idealistic young kid who takes as his ideal Jackie Robinson and the significance he had breaking the color line in professional baseball. Black people were already playing professional football at this time also, but the sport was not what it is today or in fact would shortly become starting in the middle Fifties when Davis was in college ball at the University of Syracuse.

A guy who had a lot to do with that was Ernie Davis's predecessor at the University of Syracuse Jim Brown as played by Darrin DeWitt Henson. Brown's place among professional football immortals is quite assured and he came to the Cleveland Browns with the reputation from college he more than lived up to.

In fact it's Brown that Coach Ben Schwartzwalder uses to recruit Davis to the Orangemen of Syracuse. Dennis Quaid plays the coach and he gives one of his best performances in his career. In fact it's right in line with another football film Any Given Sunday where he plays an aging quarterback with heart and guts, but losing a step or two in the field.

The film is about Quaid almost as much as about Rob Brown. The coach learns that he's living in extraordinary times for America, most extraordinary for black America. His players are not separate and apart from the social changes going on, they and the game cannot be kept in a vacuum. Proof of that comes when the Orangemen of Syracuse go south to play West Virginia and later the University of Texas in the Cotton Bowl which was more of a war than an athletic contest.

Ernie Davis beat out Jim Brown in two special categories. He was the first black man to win the Heisman Trophy for Best College Football player and probably earned it by dint of the fact that he unlike Brown led Syracuse to a national championship. It was a fact the Heisman Committee could not ignore.

The football sequences as in Any Given Sunday are done incredibly well, choreographed would not be a bad word to describe them. Davis did in fact say he would let his field exploits do his talking and they spoke loud and clear.

I hope some Oscar nominations are in the future for both Quaid and Brown. The Express will go down in history as one of the best sports films ever done and it goes along way towards keeping the story of Ernie Davis alive for generations to come.