The Great Debaters is passionate in a professional way, a very fine movie that should have challenged its audience as much as it challenged its characters.
Comment
12/26/07
The Great Debaters (2007)
79
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:126
Fresh:99
Rotten:27
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: A wonderful cast and top-notch script elevate The Great Debaters beyond a familiar formula for a touching, uplifting drama.
Runtime: 2 hrs 3 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Denzel Washington directs and stars in this uplifting drama based on a true story about a small East Texas all-black college in 1935 that rises to the top of the nation's debate teams in a duel... [More]
Starring: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett
Director: Denzel Washington
Reviews for The Great Debaters
For a film about the power of speech, it's the quiet moments of rapture that say everything.
12/26/07
Philippe Rousselot did the cinematography, which is as alive to texture as Washington's ensemble-work is to mood. If the setbacks and victories click like clockwork, at least the clockwork here is fine-tooled and handmade.
12/26/07
Click to read the article
12/26/07
The quality of the performances is uniformly good.
12/26/07
Even when it's just one person standing at a lectern, the frame is never static, the tension never slack.
12/26/07
An enjoyable, rousing film, despite its formulaic quality.
12/26/07
The actor-director brings the energy and rhythms of a sports flick to a little-known bit of American history in his deeply enjoyable film The Great Debaters.
12/26/07
There's an air of extreme predictability and inevitability in the script.
12/26/07
Washington succeeds in making debating as enthralling as contact sports.
12/26/07
Credit Washington for telling what might otherwise be a too-familiar tale with sensitivity and passion.
12/26/07
Working hard on both sides of the camera, Washington has grafted his intensity onto this production, giving it a kind of backbone it would not otherwise have.
12/26/07
Top CriticAll of this unfolds with such predictability, the title might as well be The Great Foregone Conclusion.
12/26/07
This is one of the year's best films.
12/26/07
Top CriticUltimately, as it should be, what carries the day is the power of the arguments and our recognition that it is forming these positions that will lead to the foundation of the civil rights era.
12/25/07
...enough to make you hope that one of these days Washington will forgo such conventional genre trappings and unleash his own Do the Right Thing.
12/25/07
As a movie, The Great Debaters misses too many possibilities, and harps on too many ancillary issues, to be stellar. It's solid, but that's all.
12/25/07
Washington's direction is never less than capable, and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot's images flow gracefully from scene to scene.
12/25/07
This is one of the better movies in recent years to address issues of racial inequality and the way in which individuals overcome them.
12/25/07
It goes down easy, has some great scenes, and knows how to tug on the heartstrings. But unlike its characters, it settles for less.
12/24/07
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