Pride

A A A Comments By Robert Wilonsky Thursday, Mar 22 2007

More About

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

The feature debut from South African director Sunu Gonera is straight from the sports-film playbook, the one in which an underdog team coached by an obstinate overachiever overcomes obstacles and adversity to take home the gold. It's Hoosiersin a swimming pool — well, Glory Road, anyway, given this is about a group of black swimmers competing against all-white teams who wouldn't toss the brothers a life preserver if they were drowning in the deep end. Like most sports pics, Prideis based on a true-life tale, that of Jim Ellis (played here by Terrence Howard), a former college swimmer who, in the Seventies, resuscitated a Philly rec center by filling the pool with water and some neighborhood kids with hope. Destined to be drug runners for a dangerous, but ultimately dim, neighborhood thug, the kids instead excel between the lane ropes. If everything about the movie is overly familiar, at least Gonera and his writers get the details right. The pool sequences capture the isolation of the competitive swimmer who crawls for miles in lonely, aching silence. Howard, playing Ellis with equal measures of desperation and determination, is terrific — when is he not? Better still is Bernie Mac as the rec center's janitor, who is suspicious of Ellis's motives until at last he dives in. If nothing else, Pridehas the best sports-film soundtrack ever — Philly funk and soul, Seventies-style. And hell, that'll get ya wet.

Check out this week's featured ad for Movies

Grimpa Steakhouse

View Ad View Website

More Ads >>

Get the Events Newsletter

What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.