Everybody is flawed, everybody hurts, I can't watch this

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2006)

What was nice about this movie, is that everybody is shown to be imperfect, Denzel Washington is too confident and extrovert, Will Patton wants to please everybody, both Bertier and Julius have to overcome certain racist tendencies, and so on. Even Denzel Washingtons daughter is portrayed as stuffy and pedantic. That is what makes it refreshing, we're not watching a bunch of Angels here, we're seeing real people. Possible exceptions: Ethan Suplee and Hayden Panatierre: ya gotta love the fat guy who uses his naiveté as a weapon and the Wise Kid, whose great value isn't that she knows so much about football, but that Panatierre delivers her lines with so much realness, she's a great actress, a shame she became visually a woman so soon.
This movie, I know i am supposed to feel better about this movie, but frankly, I did not feel better. It's like Brubaker in the sense that you see a movie about some bad, bad historical situation, and usually you can stomach these things by thinking 'but NOW, it's all good'. Well, like Brubaker, with the un-benefit of hindsight, we know that 20 years after, prison-life is not really improved, and we know also that race relations in America haven't really improved. Well maybe in 2000, the end of the Clinton era, there was still hope, but this here is 2006, y'all, and judging by the aftermath of Katrina, white people don't care about black people, starting from the toppest of tops down: shining example and Commander-in-Chief Bubyah! And way down to animals who thinks its necessary to drag people behind their trucks. And it looks like dubya's gonna be rewarded for it too, come November and 2008. So, while I recognize and even enjoy the occasional pockets of brotherhood and kinship between black and white displayed sometimes, in the back of my mind, while watching this flic, is always: there is still a HUGE divide! The fact that we had to wait for 2005 for a TV-series created by a black woman (Greys Anatomy), says enough and is a sign of how slow things go. Yes, there's Oprah and Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters, but also and far more importantly, there are decreasing numbers of black college students, the increasing numbers of all-white TV shows, segregation via money and bobjones university!
And of course I'm moved when watching this film, but, I'm very sorry, but when I see it, I can only think: Well, 35 years later, things aren't that much better, really.