Radio Opens Eyes

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2006)

"Radio" is a true story that brings forth an assortment of emotions when watched. It involves a mentally challenged young man nicknamed Radio (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who is taken under wing by a high school football coach, Coach Jones (Ed Harris). Radio opens the eyes of everyone is the small South Carolina town by going through road blocks in his life and always looking forward even though his future is uncertain. Radio starts attending football games with the team and feels accepted. Though once some of the hardcore fans of the town feel he is being a distraction, they have a meeting to have him banned from the field during the games and not let him go to away games anymore.
Director Michail Tollin did a fantastic job choosing who to play the characters in the movie. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ed Harris both do great jobs playing their parts. The film does an effective job conveying the amazing personalities of many of the town folk, as even Radio's mother, Maggie (S. Epatha Merkerson), asks Coach Jones why he's doing? She asked this because she was just so used to people not accepting Radio for whom he was. These scenes with Coach Jones and Radio's mother are some of the most heart warming scenes in the film.
I love the movie "Radio" because it shows how just because someone does not have the physical and mental capabilities of everyone else, they are not able to do the same things and have just as big of a heart. I like how, even though it seems to be a white community that Radio lives in, there are no racial slurs made toward him. Most movies we watch that seem to have the same kind of story line as this movie concentrate on racism. This movie makes us feel for Radio so much because as we are watching it, we know that all that is happening really took place in 1976. After watching this movie, I look at mentally handicapped people differently because I know that they are like the rest of us.