Likewise, some great movies and performances are bound to be overlooked come awards time. So far this year, most of the Oscar talk has centered around on American Beauty and The Insider , with the greatest amount of attention being focused on their respective protagonists, Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe. They want movies that question reality. They want cynicism. They want a world in which the lines between good and evil are blurred.
Obviously things are a lot different than they used to be.
Jewison's film is an old-fashioned biopic, complete with pivotal backstory, voiceover narration, and a character who enters the protagonist's life and changes it immeasurably. It's an oft-used scenario, with many scenes that could easily have been taken from Jewison's other films A Soldier's Story or In The Heat Of The Night . Yet despite the familiarity of the storyline, I'll be damned if I wasn't choking back tears of elation at the movie's triumphant conclusion. It's a masterful piece of filmmaking that proves Norman Jewison's skill as a director, as he transcends the cliche-bound script and, with the help of Washington and company, makes it a powerful entity all its own. The story, as mentioned earlier, is relatively straightforward.