PDF
Sean Connery is still an amazing actor, and in this movie he plays a grumpy, old hermit named William Forrester with flair. His performance is more than enjoyable; however, one man alone can not carry a movie and this one ends up being too long for its own good.
Forrester wrote the great American novel Avalon Landing in the mid 1950’s, never wrote another novel, and has since resided in solitude in a fourth floor apartment in the Bronx. He spends his days reading his vast collection of books, drinking and watching the neighborhood boys play basketball on the court across the street from his apartment. The boys, unaware of his identity, identify him as “the window.”
Forrester’s quiet, ordinary life is unexpectedly interrupted when Jamal (Robert Brown, XVII), a brilliant 16 year old basketball player, plays a prank on “the window” and accidentally leaves his backpack in the man’s apartment. When he gets it back, he discovers that “the window” has made notes in all of his journals where he writes his stories in secret.
Forrester agrees to council Jamal in his writing provided he asks no questions of Forrester’s private life. Jamal agrees, and the two begin to form a bond. When a private school receives word that Jamal’s test scores are fantastic, they send a recruiter to the inner-city school to convince Jamal to transfer to get a better education.
Along the way, the movie looks at problems faced by black teenagers living in the Bronx, and takes a look at interracial relationships in a poorly scripted subplot, and discusses such themes as trust and integrity.
While the movie presents an interesting character sketch of Forrester and Jamal, it is slow, and feels more like 3 hours than the 136 minute run-time it actually is. I found myself getting extremely fidgety more than once as parts of the movie dragged on.
If nothing else, wait until this movie comes out on video, so that you have the opportunity to get up and stretch when necessary. I do recommend watching it though, if only to have the opportunity to watch Sean Connery bumble around wearing flannel pajama pants, or Jamal make the BMW-driving delivery man feel like an idiot.
Comments on this entry are closed.