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Antwone Fisher

(2002)

113 min. Fox Searchlight. Director: Denzel Washington. Cast: Derek Luke, Joy Bryant, Denzel Washington, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Earl Billings.

The film Antwone Fisher, in real life, represents opportunity--for its titular subject, who turned his life into the screenplay of a major motion picture--for Derek Luke, who makes his screen debut as Fisher--and for Denzel Washington, who not only appears in a major role, but directs for the first time. The essence of Antwone Fisher--who triumphed over childhood abuse and its self-destructive consequences--cannot help but inspire. But then why does Antwone Fisher so utterly fail to do the same?

Fisher's self-mythologizing script deserves much of the blame. Tracing the character of Antwone backwards from inexplicably hotheaded navy man to confused inner child --through psychotherapy with Washington's good-hearted, surrogate-fatherly doc--the story eschews any real emotional complexity for the comfortingly simple lines of a Hollywood screenplay (the real Fisher left behind his job as a Sony Pictures security guard after insiders coached him in reshaping his autobiographical script).

Also to blame is Washington's condescending tone as director. He opens with an Oscar-baiting dream sequence--laboriously mirrored later in the film--that shows a visual acuity (credit Oscar-winning cinematographer Philippe Rousselot). What follows, however, is as visually bland as the storytelling is flat. The tidy ending--when the healing is done--will likely evoke chuckles from many, though some may respond to the formula. For me, Antwone Fisher rings false, belittling instead of honoring its sensitive subject with its kid-glove nobility and cloying payoffs.