An Oprah film (or anagrammatically, a Harpo Film) for Oprah's audience, with their insatiable appetite for uplift. The fact-based story of the debate team at little Wiley College, an all-black institution in segregationist Texas, and of their climactic showdown on the topic of Civil Disobedience against the national champs of Harvard University, plays as a sort of two-hour spot for the UNCF. Denzel Washington, as both the debate coach in front of the camera and the director behind it, may be somewhat unimaginative, even embarrassingly unimaginative, in his complete and precise merger of the two roles into one: the great edifier. (Not just my character but me myself.) Still, if the remedial elucidation of racial issues seems a bit behind the times, it's not so much because the action is set in the 1930s as because racial progress continues to lag in the 2000s. The edifier has plenty of just cause. Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker, Forest Whitaker. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.