Gus Van Sant's ''Better'' Will Hunting. Review on Finding Forrester Movie

As a film “Finding Forrester” is a diamond in the rough that is everything “Good Will Hunting'' was not – believable, charming and stirring without being maudlin, well-acted by an understated ensemble almost from top-to-bottom, and imaginatively and effectively musically scored.

Free from the embarrassingly excessive effort of Robin Williams and the predictability of Matt Damon and Minnie Driver in “Hunting,” director Gus Van Sant got a similar theme right this time, almost as if he learned his artistic lesson despite “Hunting’s” critical and box office success.

THE FILM:

Briefly stated “Finding Forrester” concerns the life and times of Jamal Wallace (played by outstanding newcomer Rob Brown), an exceptionally bright, underachieving African-American high school teenager living with his mother in the Fort Apache side of the Bronx.

When he’s not racking up outstanding standardized test scores that conflict with his nondescript classroom grades at the Bronx’s run-of-the-mill public Coolidge High School, or writing entries in his stack of personal journals, Jamal plays street basketball every day with his remarkably well-played, un-self-conscious group of buddies. The absolutely authentic-feeling urban basketball court scenes are shot in the shadows of a decrepit pre-War apartment building inhabited, among others, by a solitary figure who peers at them through his upper floor window from behind lace curtains.

The apartment’s mysterious resident is reclusive author William Forrester (played with his usual aplomb and style by Sean Connery), who attains a mythic ghostlike status with the fearful youngsters not unlike that of Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird.''

On a dare, Jamal climbs up the fire escape one night and breaks in to the apartment with the charge of bringing back proof to his friends that he got in. What happens, of course, is that Jamal’s and Forrester’s lives intersect around their shared passion for writing. As the plot unfolds, each finds redemption in the other as Jamal struggles with a decision on whether to accept a full scholarship offer from an elite prep school in Manhattan, and Forrester tries to come to terms with a world that embraced his first novel for all the wrong reasons, and drove him to self-imposed solitude and bitterness.

WHAT WORKS:

Amazingly, just about everything does, when you consider all the pitfalls facing execution of so hackneyed-sounding a theme. First of all, the performances are outstanding. Brown is the perfect first-time actor – wide-eyed believability grounded in strength of character, with neither extreme overplayed for the benefit of the camera. Brown’s is a bravura performance that allows Connery to stand back and simply react naturally to the youngster who suddenly shatters his veil of secrecy. The interplay between the two is superb….it could be the basis of a stage play. Most of the supporting actors come across similarly sympathetically, especially rap artist Busta Rhymes who convincingly plays Jamal’s brother, and Oscar-winner Anna Paquin as the down-to-earth daughter of one of the prep school’s directors. And the ensembles of basketball buddies on the one hand and prep school students on the other are perfectly tuned to the realities of both life in the ghetto and the life of privilege in mid-town Manhattan…..I know, having attended myself in the late 60s such a high school that stood on the border of Manhattan’s genteel Upper West Side and what was then the fringe of some so-called “dangerous” neighborhoods to the north.

Also most noteworthy is the movie’s catchy and atmospheric musical score comprised of several Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman jazz numbers augmented by catchy, recognizable offbeat musical numbers by Bill Frisell, and Kamakawiwo’ole’s wonderful ukelele-strumming version of “Over the Rainbow.”

WHAT DOESN’T:

Fortunately, the list is short. F. Murray Abraham is too over-the-top as a jealous professor at the prep school. His interpretation and his role as written in the screenplay are the only stereotyped elements of this otherwise understated and powerful movie, which is why they stand out so much on the negative side of the ledger. Even so, that would not have been noticed too much in this otherwise fine move had it not been for Abraham’s unnecessarily dramatic public dissembling in one of the movie’s final climactic scenes.

I choose to look at this negative from the glass-is-half-full side; the professor’s unconvincing final scene reminded me of why “Good Will Hunting” ultimately failed to grip me, and made me appreciate all the more the lessons Van Sant applied so well the second time around.

Overcome your queasiness at the prospect of another heavy-handed morality play, and soak in the atmosphere and the rich performances of “Finding Forrester.” It is most enjoyable.