Woodlawn

Birmingham, Alabama, 1973. Woodlawn High School is one of the newly desegregated schools and the tension has brought it close to closing. Tandy Gerelds, the football coach, does not know what to do. A preacher from outside speaks to the team and most of the players listen to him. In the same period a player named Tony Nathan comes to the front. Jon Erwin and Andrew Erwin direct. The cast includes Sean Astin, Nic Bishop, Caleb Castille, Sherri Shepherd, Jon Voight and C. Thomas Howell. Voight plays the Alabama coach Paul Bear Bryant. The story is real. Tandy Gerelds and Tony Nathan were real people, and Nathan went on to play in college and professional football. The film belongs openly to Christian cinema and was distributed by Pure Flix; the resolution is tied directly to a religious awakening. The best thing in it is not the games but the tension inside the school. The state of the classrooms and corridors in the first years of desegregation is filmed more concretely than the genre usually allows. The weakness is how that tension is resolved. Racism is closed off by a decision of faith and its structural side is never touched. Who it is for: viewers who like American sports films and faith centred drama. Who it is not for: the message is very plain, the characters are one dimensional, and a historical problem is solved too easily.