At the centre of Finding Forrester is a rather touching story with excellent dialogue dying to burst out of the boundaries imposed upon it by its pretentious director, Gus Van Sant.
It is, essentially, a remake of his Good Will Hunting in that it’s once again about the friendship between an old man and a young boy, this time a white writer William Forrester (Sean Connery) and a black writer Jamal Wallis (Robert Brown) respectively. The potentially heady mix of basketball, theft and literature brings them together, but reels of irrelevance render us almost completely indifferent.
Firstly, there is the hip-hop beginning that slowly fizzles out by a third of the way through. It takes ages for us to get to know Wallis’s friends – if only one could make out what they’re saying – who turn out to be fairly superfluous to the rest of the story anyway.
Then there is a friendship between young Wallis and a rich white girl Claire (Anna Paquin) that is so undeveloped that it makes one wonder whether either of their characters have genitalia, though she does manage in a moment of wild abandon to give his hand a squeeze.
Thirdly there is F Murray Abraham, reprising his role in Amadeus, this time as a mediocre writer whose disappointment led him to become a nasty piece of schoolmaster. No sympathy for him. No variation on his Salieri persona. No shading. Nothing.
Moreover, when we do get a chance to hear what the young man’s writing is about, it is briefly read by Connery before emotive music that sounds like another retread – this time from Platoon.
When the end does finally come, it’s followed by another ending that goes on forever. After which one basically wishes that a terrible
misunderstanding occurred during the shower scene in Van Sant’s scene-by-scene reshooting of Psycho.