'Radio" gets the highest rating from me, a superb human story.

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2004)

"Radio" is billed as a fictional story based on real people, but I suspect it is predominantly a true story. In 1976 a mentally challenged young black man (Cuba Gooding Jr) is given the name "Radio" because he loved radios and always had one with him. His dad was dead and his mom worked most of the time to support the two of them, and "Radio" had been basically cast aside, hardly able to speak and with no education, was seen daily pushing his shopping cart through the streets of this small South Carolina town. After some of the high school athletes give 'Radio' trouble, the coach (Ed Harris) makes 'Radio' and offer, to join them at daily afternoon football practice, maybe he can in some way help out. We don't fully understand why the coach does this, as it is not presented as any kind of direct tie-in to the hazing, but it becomes clear later in the movie, during a conversation with his teen daughter who was feeling a bit neglected.
I liked this movie so much because it plays squarely on the human principle that none of us are islands, we are instead all connected as a community and what we do to one, bad or good, reflects on the whole. Regardless of the human topic, great things start with the efforts of one, and here it was the coach taking the time and patience to help this young man become something more than a daily wanderer through town. The short clip at the end of the movie, of the real 'Radio' who today is in his 50s, shows us that things have worked out well. Gooding Jr is no doubt superb as 'Radio', proving that he indeed is one of the better actors working today. But Ed Harris is mostly responsible for how well this story resonates, because he had to play the coach perfectly, and he did. Ed Harris just reinforces why he has been a premiere actor for so many years.
SPOILERS follow, quit reading, OK!? As it turns out, he explained to his daughter, when coach was 12 and making deliveries, he encountered a young boy, perhaps handicapped, basically in an outside wire cage, treated more like an animal. He saw him many times, and as he matured realized that maybe he could have done something. When 'Radio' came along these many years later, he decided he wouldn't let that happen again. He knew we could and should do more to help the disadvantaged. He bought 'Radio' meals, let him participate in practices as a 'coach's assistant', eventually began letting him on the bench with the coach during games. Not all the parents, or the school board, were happy with this. After the football season we witness, the coach resigns his head coaching job, but remained as a teacher. The short clip at the end of the movie shows the real 'Radio', on the field with the team he still 'helps coach.'