This was submitted for the Agust edition of Drum also. Though this edition will now come out in September. If you know what I mean Ahhh, but here it is anyway, for you and your eyes.

ANTWONE FISHER

Denzel Washington is one of Hollywood’s best-loved actors, Black or White. An Oscar-winner twice over (and robbed blind for his performance as Malcolm X), he has consistently shown himself to be a powerful, intelligent screen presence with the charisma to make bad films good, and good films great.

Which is why his directorial debut, Antwone Fisher is such a terrible disappointment.

Written by Antwone Fisher himself, and based on his autobiography, Derek Luke plays the sullen, damaged Navy recruit who is referred to a psychologist (Washington) after one punch-up too many. Washington helps Luke come to terms with his traumatic past in a series of join-the-dots therapy sessions and, with much lip-biting and brow-furrowing, becomes a surrogate father-figure to him (“I love you Son”, “I love you too!”).

Antwone Fisher is little more than a hotchpotch of sentimental Gillette-man moments, interspersed with the kind of scenes of child abuse and mistreatment for which certain sections of the public seem to have an insatiable, and questionable appetite. Indeed, this is the cinematic equivalent to the ‘A Child Called It’ books by Dave Pelzer, whose combination of easily digestible nuggets of trite self-help wisdom and graphic depictions of appalling cruelty and abuse have pushed him to the top of the best-seller lists.

Like the Pelzer books, Antwone Fisher wears its ‘inspired by true life’ credentials heavily, seemingly in the hope that this will exempt it from criticism. But, by reducing a genuinely inspiring story to a hackneyed, linear Hollywood narrative, the person who is truly done a disservice is the real-life Fisher himself. Life is not a simple matter of tragedy – redemption – stirring, cathartic speech accompanied by swelling violin score. No doubt Fisher knows this as well as anyone.

Not that any of this necessarily matters – if a film is truly absorbing, you can forgive it anything. But Antwone Fisher is – crucially – very dull indeed. As mawkish, clichéd and pedestrian as a Westlife ballad, Washington allows Fisher’s story to unfold with a po-faced solemnity that seems to say, “Feel privileged, audience, to witness this important and profound piece of cinema”. If there is one thing that audiences hate, it is being patronised, and watching this film feels like being lectured by a finger-wagging schoolmistress.

A wasted opportunity.