Sports films usually rely on the same overused formula that includes an underrated player who manages to break new ground with the help of a bad-tempered or protective coach (depends on the plot) and his team, of course, that at first does not show any potential and subsequently becomes the greatest. In addition to this recipe, movies that belong to this particular genre often attack in one of these directions: they either strive to be diaphanously schmaltzy and make the viewer blubber or they go all-out to depict a disjointed tale of great effort and will.

Well, “The Express” takes both roads, in spite of the fact that it reveals from time to time a stronger orientation toward the sentimental side, as it tells the real life story of the sadly short-lived football player Ernie Davis.

The crucial idea in the production directed by Gary Fleder focuses on the 1960 Cotton Bowl, a competition in which Syracuse University played against the University of Texas. The Syracuse team was famous for two things. On the one hand, it had not been defeated throughout the whole season and, on the other hand, Ernie Davis, an extremely gifted running back who would subsequently become the first African-American to be awarded with the Heisman Trophy, was part of Syracuse football team.

“The Express” is roughly a biography of Ernie Davis, impersonated by Rob Brown, who delivers an enjoyable, but occasionally rigid performance. Ernie, who manages to triumph over an early stammer, is brought up by his mom (Aunjanue Ellis) and grandpa (Charles S. Dutton) and, after an outbreak of childhood scenes that bring in an important outline of the young man’s personal history and character, the film highlights his arrival at Syracuse. He is now taken under the wing of Ben Schwartzwalder, played by an adorable Dennis Quaid, the grumpy, yet respectable coach of the university’s team.

However, Ernie Davis finds himself in a rather tough situation. He has to both lead the way of several black students in the campus, along with his teammate and pal Jack Buckley (Omar Benson Miller), and replace Jim Brown (Darrin DeWitt Henson) as the team’s star rusher. As Jim Brown was not one of the most popular and loved players of Syracuse, Ernie Davis is forced to take over the lingering pressure and distrust on the field.

With a bit of obduracy, agreeableness and charm, Ernie Davis manages to give life to both the movie’s image of improvement and its dramatic touch, but the minus is represented by the simple fact that his inner battle is far from being revealed.

The moments in which racism blows up on the football field are the most thought provoking, and the most efficient in generating melancholy as a result of historical facts. The finale of “The Express” is, as you might expect, grave, since Ernie Davis’s life was unfortunately abridged by an unforgiving disease, leukemia, which increases the general attirude of sentimental surplus. Nevertheless, if such a production did not abound in slushy moods, it would be far from reaching its purpose, which is to offer an impressive amount of plain, stirring sensations.