Jamal is a seemingly typical teen living in the inner city. He gets fair grades, has many friends and enjoys playing basketball. However, his life changes dramatically for two reasons. First, he meets a strange recluse, William Forrester, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner who simply disappeared from all public view. Second, Jamal takes a standardized test which reveals he may be a genius and because of this, and his basketball skills, he's offered a scholarship to a fancy private school in New York. How do both things end up coinciding with each other? See the film.

While I'll quickly admit that a 70-something white recluse becoming a friend and mentor to a black teen is hard to believe, I didn't mind this nor the schmaltziness of the script. Sure, it's tough to believe but also very well crafted and enjoyable if you don't spend the entire film questioning the plot. Just sit back and enjoy some fine performances and a sweet tale of both Jamal AND William Forrester.

Director Gus Van Sant took the best parts of his own Good Will Hunting and Scent Of A Woman and fashioned Finding Forrester. The title is a something of a misnomer in that Forrester and someone else kind of find each other.

The title role of finding Forrester is played by Sean Connery who is a J.D. Salinger type author who has lived as a recluse in a brownstone. He wrote one novel back in the day and never wrote another. Presumably he said all there was to say in his mind.

A young ghetto kid with a talent for basketball and a bigger talent for writing meet in a rather peculiar fashion that I won't go into. They form a nice relationship, supplying needs for each other. Rob Brown who was a newcomer played the kid who has gotten a basketball scholarship, from a posh prep school, but has dazzled many with his abilities as a writer.

Finding Forrester has an interesting commentary on our stereotypes. Brown is in the school to bring home a basketball champion. Black ghetto kids are supposed to have talent in that direction. But creative writing? Just where do they think the James Baldwins spring from? That's no matter to frustrated professor F. Murray Abraham who teaches because he failed as a novelist. As Connery puts it people can get the mechanics of writing down, but talent can't be learned.

Anyway Brown gets put through a ringer like Chris O'Donnell did in Scent Of A Woman. Can you imagine the late J.D. Salinger coming out of his hideaway in New England on such a mission as Connery undertakes. Much bigger than what Al Pacino did in Scent Of A Woman.

Connery and Brown do form a nice bond and they have good chemistry for the viewer. And that's really about 80% of Finding Forrester.

You'll find Finding Forrester worth the effort.

William Forrester (Sean Connery) is a reclusive writer living in an old building in a black neighborhood. He's The Window, a mysterious ghost to the kids. Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown) is a great basketball player and keeps a C average for appearances. His older brother Terrell (Busta Rhymes) is a hustler. He breaks into Forrester's apartment but leaves behind his backpack leading to a mentorship with the mysterious man. He had scored high on a standardized test and given a scholarship to the private Mailor School in Manhattan. He is befriended by the smart Claire Spence (Anna Paquin). Prof. Robert Crawford (F. Murray Abraham) assigns Forrester's novel in his class.

It's a fairly traditional mentor movie. Sean Connery is excellent. Rob Brown has a sweetness as well as some quiet intensity. It's all very well done and well made. Their scenes together are nicely done.