DENZEL Washington is usually better when he plays bad characters – as in “American Gang ster” – than when he dons a halo, as in “The Great Debaters,” an achingly sincere inspirational film Washington has also directed.
Not that there is anything particularly wrong with Washington’s performance as Melvin B. Tolson, who coaches a student debating team from all-black Wiley College to national prominence during the Depression.
The vaguely roguish Tolson, who is very possibly a Communist, is also trying to organize migrant farm workers into a union. It’s this activity – which gets short shrift in an overlong movie – that’s actually more interesting than the rather dry debating sequences.
Tolson’s organizing gets him thrown into cracker sheriff John Heard’s jail at one point, and the atheist scholar is freed through a demonstration organized by soft-spoken but powerful theologian James B. Farmer Sr., played by Forest Whitaker in his best performance in many years.
Farmer’s baby-faced son, Junior (well played by the confusingly named newcomer Denzel Whitaker, no relation to either actor), is, at 14, Tolson’s youngest debater and will go on to become a major civil rights leader as the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality.
Young Farmer is mostly relegated to the role of researcher and quietly simmers while the beautiful, pre-feminist Samantha Brooke (the solid Jurnee Smollett) has eyes only for their scalawag teammate Henry Lowe (Nate Parker).
It’s easy to see what attracted Washington and his co-producer, Oprah Winfrey, to this property. It’s a relevant reminder of America’s Jim Crow era, especially when Tolson and his terrified charges run into a lynching on their way to a debate.
This powerful, well-handled sequence has an energy that’s otherwise in short supply in Washington’s direction, which is better than it was in “Antwone Fisher,” but is still too polite and careful.
There’s an air of extreme predictability and inevitability in the script – which takes liberties like moving the climactic debate from the University of Southern California to the grander precincts of Harvard.
But I was much more bothered by James Newton Howard and Peter Golub’s insistent score, which milks audience emotion that “The Great Debaters” could have delivered on its own.
THE GREAT DEBATERS
Oprah’s cause du jour.
Running time: 123 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, disturbing images, profanity, sexuality). At the E-Walk, the Harlem USA, others.