Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester
Finding Forrester is the story of Jamal Wallace's, played by Rob Brown in his first motion picture, life in the rough world of the inner city. Early on we find that Jamal is very intellectually gifted from his scores on the standardize test, but he doesn't try to succeed in school so that he won't be secluded from his friends. On a dare, he sneaks into a mysterious apartment, but leaves his backpack behind when is surprised by the old man. When the old man tosses the backpack out his window the next time Jamal is passing by, Jamal is surprised to find that the old man actually had commented on all of his writing, using such phrases as where are you taking me and constipated writing. Jamal goes back to the apartment and to his surprise, befriends the inhabitant. The man helps Jamal with his writing, in exchange for Jamal keeping a secret: the man is William Forrester, played by
I felt the charter of William Forrester was more of a Father figure to Jamal than anything else, though he did help Jamal grow in his writing. Professor Crawford is shown as an unfair teacher that wants other to suffer because of his own difficulty to publish a book. He picks on Jamal especially because he is a black student from the Bronx and "just another basketball player." Ms. Joyce was Jamal's teacher at the public school that first realized Jamal's potential and is portrayed as a teacher working hard to help her students. As for diversity issues in the movie there are plenty. Besides Jamal being a poor black student from the Bronx going to an elite predominantly upper class school with white professors and Jamal dating a member of the board's daughter, there really isn't that much diversity in the film (just kidding). In the film, one can see that at the slightest hint of racism, Jamal goes on the offensive and bashes out, until Forrester teaches him