The Rating: PG-13

Marquee Cast Members: Denzel Washington; Forest Whitaker; Kimberly Elise; Jurnee Smollett; Denzel Whitaker; Jermaine Williams; Chuck Slavin; Nate Parker; Sean Paul Cormier

The Synopsis:  The Great Debaters depicts the whirlwind of Northerner/ professor Mel Tolson as he comes to the small Texas school of Wiley College and by the strength of charisma and passion prods his charges to learn to fight with words, not fists. The script watches as he takes his young charges – Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), James T. Farmer (Denzel Whitaker), Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett) and, for a time, Garrett (Jackson Walker) -- and puts them in a crucible of tension and oratorical exercise.

The Review:

One thing is clear from the beginning of The Great Debaters, Denzel Washington, who directed as well as stars in the film, knew that for it to inspire, motivate, educate, shame and grip, first of all it had to entertain. So he turns the tale of how tiny black Wiley College, of Marshall, Tex., out-argued the white national debate champion in 1935 into a suspense by the old standards of Hollywood melodrama.

Washington opens the film not in the halls of the hero-institution that spawned the great debaters but in a swamp juke-joint. Its bravura staging, almost a pure musical number, calls up the era -- the Old South in the depth of the Depression. It’s there that Mel Tolson -- a poet, debate coach, labor organizer and mentor dressed in shabby country clothes -- saves young Henry from tragedy when he fixes on a young married woman. Although Henry escapes, owing Mel with his life, he's too prideful to acknowledge the debt. And that will be their relationship as Mel coaches Henry and three others to American history. Mel will always be a realist, taking what is available without a fight, a day at a time; and Henry will always be a radical, wanting that fight now, steaming with aggression – a dynamic that defines the movie.

Just as riveting are the great performances: Washington is the faculty upstart to Forest Whitaker's PhD status. To watch these two great actors going after each other in a mini-debate at a holiday party is one of the big pleasures of the movie.  Still, the movie belongs to Smollett.  There's such passion and pain in her performance. She plays a woman named Samantha Booke, eager to be Texas's third practicing African American female lawyer. Her hold on dignity is precious; she's beautiful but won't let it go to her head; she's vulnerable, though she tries to hide it.  She’s come a long way from Bow Wow’s Roll Bounce.

While many films based on historic events make the common fallacy of including gratuitous fictional plot, Debaters does not stray from its message despite fictional elements such as the romantic relationship between Booke and Lowe or that fact that Booke's character was inspired by Henrietta Bell, who was not a member of the award-winning debate team but was its first female member. Even the historically black East Texas college challenging the Cambridge bluebloods is a bit of screenwriter's poetic license. Let the record show that the national champion Wiley actually faced was from the University of Southern California.

Nonetheless. The Great Debaters, Denzel Washington's inspired and inspiring account - of a professor from an academic backwater who took his students to the rhetoric equivalent of the Super Bowl - is a triumph.

Conclusion:

The Great Debaters is a must see. It preaches redemption through education and hard. Although not historically perfect, it's a great family movie.