When you look over the roles that Cuba Gooding Jr. has had over the years, seeing the diversity in the characters, you realize what a gifted actor he is. He shows it clearly in this role, as Ben Carson, gifted surgeon from very humble beginnings.
The movie opens with a difficult case where Dr Carson is contemplating the separation of German conjoined twins, sharing a cranium and parts of their brains. His big hurdle is figuring out a way to keep them from bleeding to death during the surgery. From that we are treated to a long flashback of his life from a young student, through his teen years, and medical school.
Ben Carson was not a "natural." He had developed spotty study habits and was distracted by hours of TV after school. As a result he was borderline failing in all his classes. But the awakening came when his mother insisted that he and his brother spend less time watching TV and more time reading books from the library.
Ben Carson became a success from his mother's motivation, and from his own motivation to became a doctor. As the movie draws to its conclusion we are again taken to the beginning, the difficult case of the conjoined twins. He pioneered a procedure which proved to be successful.
A bonus in the DVD extras include the real Ben Carson, who today is not that much older than the actor who plays him in this movie.
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