Coach Jones of a high school football team risks everything when he lets a mentally challenged young man they nickname Radio into the school.
This is based on a true story and a film I had heard a little bit about before eventually getting round to watching it on Netflix last week. I throughly enjoyed Ed Harris in this film and every other film I have seen him in for that matter.
Coach Jones let’s Radio come along to the football practices after an incident with some of his players. He wants to teach them that they cannot treat anybody like that and bully them just because they are different. He puts a lot of his own time into helping Radio and really fights to teach him, his speech really does start to improve when he is allowed to be in the school. Obviously some problems and issues come along with all of this as well.
It is an inspiring story to show that a community can change and really group together for someone. Some of the scenes which I will not spoil are really heartwarming. While remembering that this is based on a real person you wonder how people can be so cruel to someone else, but then love how so many people then actually begin to help.
Cuba Gooding Jr puts in an interesting performance. Why interesting? Well I can’t really think of how else to describe it, does he over do it? Or is that how the real Radio was to begin with. I guess that’s only something a select number of people will actually know. It is difficult to watch him that is for sure, I am just undecided if it was a good performance or not.
I think it is a good film to show how people can react to disabled people but how you can also do little things to actually help them out. Without realising that is a message which comes out from this film by the end of it, you wonder what else can be done to help people who are less fortunate than yourself.
Another part of the story is seeing Jones’ relationship or lack of it with his daughter, he does not seem to communicate very well with her at all. But that is something else to keep watching during the course of the film, it gives the story another edge as well. With Jones putting a lot of time and effort into Radio he is forgetting about his daughter. This does result in some nice scenes between them when they both make more of an effort with each other.
While it does have a good message, it is not the best film of this type that you could watch. But another which does show how powerful sport can be and communicate with people of all different backgrounds. It really does help to bring everyone together to support a team or help a team out, which is one thing that is shown in this film. Both football and basketball kept Radio busy and involved in something quite special.
