'The Great Debaters'

Rating:

BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com

December 21, 2007

"The Great Debaters" is grimly determined to inspire by any means necessary. On a purely visceral level, it succeeds, but at considerable cost to historical veracity and dramatic nuance. You admire the film for trying to get moviegoers worked up over protagonists who use rhetoric and reason as weapons instead of guns and fists. You lament that it doesn't trust its material enough to do much more than flatter its audience's good intentions.

Co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, "Great Debaters" tells a story that, as with many sagas of the black experience, deserved dramatizing decades before now. In 1935, poet Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington, who also directs) taught English and coached debating at Wiley College, an all-black school in Marshall, Texas. The team he nurtured that mid-Depression season won just about every competition it entered, notably an unprecedented triumph at the University of Southern California.

Among the members of that legendary team were future civil rights leader James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), the 14-year-old son of Wiley president James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker, to whom the younger Denzel has no relation). The young prodigy is depicted here as a thin-skinned witness not only to the more commanding speaking styles of teammates Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) and Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), but also to Tolson's extracurricular activities as an organizer of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

Most of the debating that goes on in "Great Debaters" coalesces around the notion that racism is a terrible thing. Few if any who see this movie will find fault with such a notion, especially after its graphic depiction of a lynching and the weaselly machinations of the local sheriff (John Heard).

What also can't be denied is that Washington's flamboyant star turn makes it clear that he's the reason for this movie's existence, despite the warmth and earnestness of the younger cast members. It must be added, however, that Washington the director shows a more elegant touch with this material than he did with his not-too-shabby 2002 effort, "Antwone Fisher."

Forest Whitaker's pious, embattled college president is made of far more complex stuff than the movie wishes to engage. That the climactic debate is set at Harvard rather than USC testifies just as much to the movie's willingness to settle for obvious and simplistic consummation.

And why oh why was it necessary to milk every drop of tension from the climax? Given everything that comes before, is there really any doubt as to how everything comes out? One more question: Now that it's possible to get stories about thoughtful African-Americans on the big screen, is it too much to ask that the stories be more thoughtful as well?

THE GREAT DEBATERS (PG-13). Denzel Washington directs and stars in this rousing if overcooked account of the legendary 1935 debate team of black students from tiny Wiley College battling Jim Crow and each other en route to glory. (2:04. violence, some disturbing imagery, vulgarities, brief sexuality). Opens Tuesday at area theaters.