Anna Paquin Movie:

Editorial Review:
Finding Forrester could have been a shallow variant of The Karate Kid, congratulating itself for featuring a 16-year-old black kid from the South Bronx who's a brilliant scholar-athlete. Instead, director Gus Van Sant plays it matter-of-fact and totally real, casting a nonactor (Rob Brown) as Jamal, a basketball player and gifted student whose writing talent is nurtured by a famously reclusive author. William Forrester (Sean Connery) became a literary icon four decades earlier with a Pulitzer-winning novel, then disappeared (like J.D. Salinger) into his dark, book-filled apartment, agoraphobic and withdrawn from publishing, but as passionate as ever about writing. On a dare, Jamal sneaks into Forrester's musty sanctuary, and what might have been a condescending cliché--homeboy rescued by wiser white mentor--turns into an inspiring meeting of minds, with mutual respect and intelligence erasing boundaries of culture and generation.

Comparisons to Van Sant's Good Will Hunting are inevitable, but Finding Forrester is more honest and less prone to touchy-feely sentiment, as in the way Jamal and a private-school classmate (Anna Paquin) develop a mutual attraction that remains almost entirely unspoken. The film takes a conventional turn when Jamal must defend his integrity (with Forrester's help) in a writing contest judged by a skeptical teacher (F. Murray Abraham), but this ethical subplot is a credible catalyst for Forrester's most dramatic display of friendship. It's one of many fine moments for Connery and Brown (a screen natural), in a memorable film that transcends issues of race to embrace the joy of learning. --Jeff Shannon

Finding Forrester [Region 2] Reviews:
The Bronx, basket ball and creative writing
2009-12-10 - This film is a lot more than the story of a black boy from the Bronx finding his full realization in both basket-ball and creative writing. This film is a lot more than the skimming of black public high schools by white private high school to find the winning sportsmen they need. This film is a lot more than the story of a black teenager who finds his mentor, a father substitute since he has no father and his elder brother is not the model he wants, in a famous and yet totally marginal writer, Scottish by origin and bird-loving by choice and passion. This film is a lot more than the exacting tyrant a failed writer can become when he decides to compensate his failure in writing by becoming a creative writing and literature teacher. And this film is also a lot more than the phenomenal emotional shock it is for an aging man, diagnosed with cancer, entirely solitary and marginalized to find by accident and the insistence on the side of the foundling, the younger man who is going to be his follow-up next generation. He gets out of his cocoon. He gets out of his seclusion. Even so much that he will save his foundling from academic probation and even open up the door to his future. This film is all that together and a lot more. It is the story of loyalty, commitment and yet betrayal and salvation. Deeply emotional all along the film gets to a poignant ending when the death of the older man is announced by a lawyer to the younger man, and when this younger man is given the full legacy of the older man: the keys to the older man's den and sanctuary in the Bronx, a final farewell manuscript letter and the manuscript of his second and posthumous novel to be prefaced by the younger man. The racial problem is dealt with delicately but thoroughly showing how little race has to do with creative imagination, or even plain human love, but also that it has a lot to do with some preconceived ideas that a black basket ball player cannot be a creative writer of any excellence. A film to watch several times just for fun and emotional inspiration. You can always trace and track all the visual or situational allusions to many other films, like Matt Damon as a young lawyer. I have seen that somewhere else. Solve the many riddles of the type like the older man on his old fashioned bike cycling to the private school to save his black younger friend from ostracism and rejection. He just misses a black gown flying around him.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Val de Marne Créteil, CEGID.


Finding Forrester
2009-11-18 - I own this on VHS. I wanted the DVD. I use this film in summer school for English 11. A great story.

Solid acting, wholesome message, generally excellent movie
2009-11-04 - As mentioned in my title, people can see a well acted and wholesome movie and be rewarded by the positive messages that are provided within the scenes. Good illustration of people struggling with their handicaps.


FInding Forrester
2009-09-20 - This was a great movie in the theater and glad we added it to our DVD library.

If you like Sean Connery
2009-07-01 - This is a wonderful movie about a young black boy who is great at basketball and want's to write. Sean Connery plays a reclusive writer who ends up being a great mentor to boy. It is by far a great "feel good" movie.