In an obvious return to Good Will Hunting territory, Gus Van Sant gives us another story of a gifted young student (this time played by Rob Brown) and his aged mentor (Sean Connery).
Student Jamal Wallace (Brown) meets reclusive writer William Forrester (Connery) who wrote one successful novel decades ago, but has refused to write another, and now lives in self-enforced obscurity. Forrester lives alone, dislikes people and makes witty but insightful statements about people and the world, the way reclusive writers always do in these kind of films. As luck would have it, Wallace just happens to be studying Forrester's book at school, and the old boy is able to give him some pointers. But disaster strikes when Wallace humiliates his school tutor (F. Murray Abraham) and then submits for a literary competition a piece which unintentionally plagiarises one of Forrester's works.
Finding Forrester might strike you as intelligent if you've never picked up a book in your life, but think it might be nice to do so one day. In which case you're probably the target audience. It's one of those films where being able to quote random lines from Dickens or Mark Twain is meant to convey great literary ability. Characters supposedly have minutely-detailed recollection of great works of literature despite never apparently picking up a book, let alone reading one. The main advantage of Wallace's literary ability seems to be that it increases his pulling power. Maybe we should admire an attempt like this to convince us that literary knowledge is a sure way of picking up girls, but I thought the makers had something more serious in mind.
This whole film, sadly, is conducted on a TV movie level, which is really no more than it deserves. The plot is mechanical and predictable and the characters aren't even vaguely convincing. Connery can be a good actor, but he's given nothing to really work with and the story and character development in Finding Forrester are strictly by the numbers. Save for a star cameo towards the end there really isn't a surprise in the whole film.
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