Finding Forrester (2000)

This is a heart-warming movie with fine performances by Sean Connery and Rob Brown. The film revolves around two main characters, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, and sixteen year old Jamal, played by Rob Brown. William Forrester is an author who is has been reclusive after writing is award winning novel a very long time ago. He has lived alone in a small apartment ever since, while the world around him as changed, but he soon meets Jamal, an intellectual, gifted child who plays street basketball and loves to write, and does both very well. A relationship springs between them both! As Jamal is under Forrester’s secret tutoring, Jamal’s writing skills boost exceptionally. When Jamal’s scholarship test scores come to the attention of the tutors, the school officials offer him a scholarship to attend and if he chooses to he will have to join the basketball team. When he joins the school, Jamal encounters racism from a teacher who tries to destroy Jamal as he believes he is just another student who is incapable of anything. He does not seem to believe that he can possibly write as well as him because of Jamal’s stereotype. Jamal may be a gifted writer but also happens to play basketball. Truly scholarly, he shows up his teacher in class only to have his entry excluded from the prestigious writing competition. Due to the teacher’s dislike of him, he gets exposed for his racism and what it has become in a surprising climax. Jamal, however, is not the only one to have a moment of greatness. Forrester also had that moment as he puts the past behind him and he has learnt what true friendship was as Jamal has shown him what is means. Overall, this film is about friendship that is made by a shared passion, it is about the old tutoring the young and it is also is about how age and race doesn’t matter.