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Finding Forrester [DVD] [2001] starring: Sean Connery, Anna Paquin, F. Murray Abraham, April Grace, Busta Rhymes

Publisher: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Release date: 20th August, 2001
Media: DVD

Audio Formats

English (Original Language)

Subtitles

Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish

Format

• Anamorphic
• PAL
• Widescreen

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Editorial Review

Finding Forrester is a very accomplished example of the sentimental melodrama that Gus Von Sant has made his own--issues like integrity and snobbery are presented with just enough simplification to the set pieces that no-one feels challenged. Brilliant baseball player Jamal gets the chance to move from a sink school in the Bronx to a private academy where his real intellectual and artistic talent will be nurtured along with his sporting skills. This is an American film about class and race, but one that makes the real issue Jamal's unsuspecting need to defend himself against accusations of plagiarism. His artistic mentor is a reclusive novelist, whose whereabouts he keeps secret even when he stands to lose everything. Rob Brown is extraordinary as the boy, conveying the sensitivity, genius, obstinacy and physicality of a character written as a paragon; Sean Connery turns in a predictably fine performance as Forrester, using his authority to make the part credible; F Murray Abrahams is, as always, an effective villain--he brings an observed creepy snobbery to the film; Anna Paquin makes a good impression in the minor part of Jamal's white schoolfellow and supporter.

On the DVD: The disc includes two powerful deleted scenes of school choirs, a "making-of" documentary and a short film about the auditions process which found Rob Brown. It has fine sound--Dolby Digital 5.1--that brings out the film's jazz score perfectly. The anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16:9 TVs, looks just fine. --Roz Kaveny

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Average rating - (more reviews)

Rating: - soul searching

I loved this film and cried a lot at the end. I am not usually a weeper, there is only one other movie I cried whilst watching.

Would highly recommend it.

Rating: - Thought provoking and fascinating

Finding Forrester isn't one of Connery's better known films, but it is one of his better performances. He plays a reclusive author who is gradually brought out of his shell by a young black student with a real gift for literature. The interplay between the two is the most interesting part of the film and the growing sense of friendship is really well portrayed. Any fan of Connery's would be well advised to watch this film

Rating: - Bigotry is no creative writing

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.

Rating: - Great actors formula movie

It has been done a million times and this won't be the last time the "teacher, student, rebel," mechanism will be tried. Take one recluse (Sean Connery) and an aspiring under privileged student (Rob Brown VI) to cancel out a dysfunctional environment. They even have a common nasty antagonist (F. Murray Abraham) to pick on.
Predictability is not the problem. It starts out so noisy that you will have to turn the sound off for the first five minutes. Everything from the story to the environment to the camera shots is mediocre. Anything that may have been of use for writing or refereed to writing is glossed over with music or faded out. You can be assured this movie has nothing to do with writing other than hitting the (typewriter) keys hard enough. The characters (not that the actors did not try) had no depth. Too many things were inferred from obscure camera shots. You get the picture.

Rating: - A fitting au revoir

Although he did another one or two films before his formal retirement, this is as good a swan song as the splendid old so-and-so deserves. Playing a character based so obviously on J D Salinger he even has the same number of syllables in his name(!) but it's all good fun - to the extent that the film really only seems to move forward when Connery is on screen.

But...it's all a bit too contrived for my taste, to many Hollywood coincidences in the script - plus Van Sant had only directed Good Will Hunting a few years earlier and this film suffers (as most would) by comparison to that. It's the sense of going back to the well one time to many.

Major gripe - the story goes on too long (SPOILER SPOLIER SPOILER!)and there's no need really to have most of the scenes after the death of Forrester - the end shot in my mind always comes back to Forrester cycling off through the heavy daytime city traffic, in his suit and coat, completely out of place but enjoying the world again.

To me, it's better that a million `Shaken, not stirred' clips in giving us a fond farewell to Mr Connery. May his tartan retirement be restful..

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