Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester stars Sean Connery as William Forrester, a writer who once wrote a great novel, but stopped writing and became a recluse. He lives, or should I say exists, in a junk-filled Bronx apartment and he never goes out. He watches birds and the local kids playing through binoculars, has his groceries delivered to his door, and his phone was disconnected twenty years ago. A group of teenagers playing basketball have got used to the fact that he spies on them, and have made up stories about who he is and what bad things he must have done in the past. One day, they make a dare that one of them must go up there and sneak into the old man’s apartment. The dare is taken by one Jamal Wallace, a brilliant basketball player who also happens to be a brilliant writer, but keeps that quiet for fear that his friends will reject him. When Forrester catches Jamal in his apartment, Jamal takes off and forgets his bag. A few days later, the bag lands in the street below the old man’s window, and Jamal finds that Forrester has corrected and commented his entire collection of notebooks. Sensing that Forrester may be able to help him with his writing, Jamal ventures back to the apartment, ignoring the onslaught of rude and racist remarks that Forrester makes, and so begins a kind of friendship between the young and old writers.

Meanwhile, Jamal’s exam results have earned him a place in a highly respected private school. With Forrester’s guidance, his writing improves dramatically, and his tutor, unable to accept the fact that a black basketball player could be such a good writer, becomes suspicious. Jamal is forced to prove that the work he is producing is really his own, and he could quite easily do so — but he refuses to. It seems that he would rather be expelled and throw his future away than bow down to the powers that be. This prepares the way for a sequence that was, well, not entirely unexpected.

Sean Connery’s performance here as a frightened and bitter old man is exceptional, as is the performance of newcomer Rob Brown who plays Jamal. The film was directed by Gus Van Sant and has been compared to his earlier film Good Will Hunting which was also about a young genius being given a chance to shine. The similarity between the films, however, ends there.