And Washington's direction, while professional, is just as standard and familiar, using too many master shots and not enough visual imagination. She's joined by a series of plot points from deep in the vaults, from hostile characters who give information when it's required to uses of (bad) poetry to reveal sensitivity. ![]() Joy Bryant is given the thankless task of being Fisher's movie girlfriend, the kind with no personality of her own, existing purely as ballast for the male lead-and she's forced to be smiley and genial at the expense of her sense of character. The therapy structure denies an active role for the audience in which they realize for themselves what happens instead of assuming that the filmmakers know, and as a result the film becomes a series of cue cards without dramatic weight.īut if the filmmakers are less than adept at narrative construction, they're more than up to the challenge of repeating a series of hoary Hollywood clichés. The film seems to know all too well what Fisher's problem is, and while it's hard to deny credence to the screenwriter's own story, he's not very good at evoking-instead encapsulating-the patterns that governed his life. The film's construction as an extended therapy session gets in the way of coming to grips with these events: they are so completely and easily explained by the Davenport character that they prohibit a more experiential understanding. But Davenport takes a liking to Fisher, and mentors him as he struggles with his secrets and hits the road to recovery.Īs the film progresses, more is revealed, and in theory one should be moved by the confessions as they shed light on Fisher's condition. Landing in the office of psychiatrist Jerome Davenport (Denzel Washington), he stays on and reveals his terrible childhood-his father was murdered when he was very young, his mother gave him up to foster care, and his foster mother was a self-hating black woman who beat him at every possible convenience. The film finds naval petty officer Fisher (newcomer Derek Luke) in trouble for the umpteenth time for his hair-trigger temper he's clearly got some wells of anger inside, but in therapy-melodrama style, nobody is sure why. It pains me to come to that conclusion, because the film is clearly well-meaning, and the triumph over a cruel past it depicts is real.
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