Stars:
*** 1/2
Rating: PG-13 for language, mature themes
and brief sexuality
Run
Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Turns out
Denzel Washington makes magic on both sides of the camera.
Washington
helms and stars in this tight period weeper inspired by an African American
college debate team that took the circuit by storm in the deeply segregated
1930s South.
The
mid-1930s was a time of change, with seeds of revolution planted from Houston
to Harlem. A fact not unnoticed by radical Wiley College poet and educator
Melvin B. Tolson (Washington) who endeavors to fill his students’ heads with
more than mindless facts and figures.
To that end
Tolson fashions himself a debate team of the fiercest young minds, sidestepping
the conventional wisdom of the times that equates blacks with failure. His philosophy:
to find, take back and keep your righteous mind.
The team –
three men and (gasp) a woman – struggles to get it right. In fits and starts
they discover their rhythm and along with it a burning passion for the spoken
word and Black American rights.
The essential
outline is spare, even a tad formulaic, but Washington works hard at fleshing
out the humanity of his players and their static environment. A team member’s
strict preacher father (Forest Whitaker) who can’t show affection, a bigoted
town sheriff (John Heard) rabidly opposed to the local sharecroppers’
burgeoning labor union and a moody romance between team leaders Henry Lowe
(Nate Parker) and Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett) that jeopardizes the team’s
perfectly calibrated balance.
Knowing
when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, Washington and company pull narrative
punches when the story threatens to fall back on convention, rendering the
whole off-kilter enough to maintain intrigue.
Rivers of
racial tension flow into an eddy of stirring sentiment, a rousing cry for
justice, equality and freedom. Oh so naturally the story culminates in the
grandest debate of them all; a stand-up-and-cheer, break-out-your-handkerchiefs
triumph over the odds.
Every year
there’s a movie that shamelessly moves me to tears and this is the one. Affecting,
sentimental and worth every penny of your holiday entertainment budget.