Finding Forrester

Starring Sean Connery, Robert Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin and Busta Rhymes. Written by Mike Rich. Directed by Gus Van Sant.

I wasn’t initially thrilled with the trailers for this film. I thought (and was actually correct) that they gave too much away. The entire story of the film is right there in that 30 second of tantalization that you could miss when you go get popcorn.

Then I discovered that it was directed by Gus Van Sant. I’m not a HUGE Van Sant fan, but I do like his work. I even liked Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and that was a hard movie to like. Van Sant is, of course, the openly homosexual enfant terrible whose first flick, Drugstore Cowboy put him on the A-list of directors. His next work My Own Private Idaho was an instant classic. Since then Van Sant has worked on such diverse projects at To Die For and the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. His best known project was a little flick you may have heard of written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It was called Good Will Hunting. Interesting body of work. Certainly there are themes that recur during his films, and while I’m not going into them here, Van Sant’s name on the marquee is what brought me to Finding Forrester, because if I wanted to see Sean Connery over-act, I can do that by renting any of his 20 previous flicks.

Robert Brown plays Jamal Wallace, a very gifted African-American basketball player who lives with his single mother in a very bad section of New York. Jamal also happens to be a very gifted writer. When his buddies dare him to go into the apartment of "the window" an urban legend type of crotchety old man, Jamal does, and discovers perhaps the most influential person in his entire life. Seems that "the window" is actually William Forrester (Sean Connery), a legendary writer, who wrote one fantastic book in 1953, then disappeared from the face of the Earth. Through a series of contrived plot developments Forrester and Jamal become close friends and lovers. Oh, whoops, wrong movie. No they don’t become lovers, but they do make a great connection, which is what makes this film good.

But as I said (and in the movie they mention that I, as a writer, can start a sentence or paragraph with "but" or "and" if I want to add emphasis, so there), it is only through a series of plot contrivances that we got to the resolution, and there lies the problem. Jamal is accepted on a scholastic scholarship to a private prep school, where it is assumed that he will play basketball and bring them a state championship. Jamal also begins a friendship with the white daughter of one of one of the school’s high muckety-mucks, and that causes tension as well. Finally there is the English Professor (F. Murrary Abraham) who distrusts Jamal's writing prowess, and accuses him of cheating. Of course, EVERYTHING works out and we get a happy ending.

And we get a cameo by Matt Damon in the contrived epilogue.

So, while it is a Gus Van Sant film in scope and execution, it is not a Van Sant film in the writing and thematically. This movie could have been directed by any movie-of-the-week hack, or even Michael Bay, and it would have come out the same. It might not look as pretty, since Van Sant always utilizes great cinematography and his scenery is well framed, but it would nevertheless be the same flick.

There are some decent performances to note. Robert Brown as Jamal has a fine career ahead of him as the next Denzel Washington or Wesley Snipes, should he choose to go that route. Personally I hope he takes the Spike Lee route myself. Busta Rhymes, as Jamal’s brother, is engaging as always, and provides the voice of reason, and the comic relief, much like a black version of the Kevin Smith character Silent Bob. Connery chews up every scene he’s in, but since he put up his own money for this one, I can forgive it. F. Murrary Abraham is fine as usual, though there isn’t anything spectacular about his performance.

I didn’t see The Piano but I hear that Anna Paquin delivered a great performance in it, so much so, she won an Academy Award. Pretty high stuff for a youngster. Since then, she’s been in some strange flicks, X-Men and Almost Famous this year, and others since. Here she is merely window dressing, with an annoying undeterminable accent. I thought she was from New Zealand, but her bio over at IMDB says she is Canadian. Hunh.

Nothing spectacular, but nothing horrible either. My rating, a perfect *** out of 5.