Metacritic reviews

A huge surprise: a startlingly resonant yet unabashedly entertaining slice of American history, a popcorn movie with complex observations about, of all things, racism.

Earns its emotional moments, and it takes the audience along.

A conventional, button-pushing but emotionally affecting tale.

Has the outer form of a brave statement about the races in America, but the soul of a sports movie in which everything is settled by the obligatory last play in the last seconds of the championship game.

The script's hokiness flattens the performances.

Denzel Washington, by now, could do this sort of role in his sleep.

A shrewd, pulpy crowd-pleaser.

Herman Boone was no doubt a terrific football coach, but the lessons to be drawn from his success in Alexandria are ambiguous, and Remember the Titans is too wrapped up in its weepy macho sentimentality to address them clearly.

Distressingly shallow.

History as filtered through the faux-liberal prism of Hollywood's dream factory, and an insult, I believe, to the people who actually carried the fight and endured the pain for civil rights.