The Great Debaters (2007)

Release:2007

Dircetor: Denzel Washington

Genre: Drama, Based on a true story



Story

The Great Debaters is a drama about a black-college debaters team, which has to prove itself by competing against other negro-colleges. In this time period is was very rare that negro-college team had the chance to compete against white college team in America. That was the goal of Wiley College, where the debaters coach Melvin B. Tolson (in the movie called Mr. Tolson) wants to create a succesful debaters team which can even compete against white colleges in the country. The biggest hurdle of that goal was not the quality of speeches his student presented, it was the many Jim Crow Laws which created a fear against the black people.

 One of the main characters of this movie was James Farmer Jr., a 14 year old boy who joined Wiley's debater team after graduating high school. After a slow start of his season he climbed his way up to be one of the main debaters, who are dreaming of debating in the probalby most historical college of the United States, Harvard University. In the Beginning he was not in the starting lineup for the debating team, because the coach did'

Other Facts

Denzel Washington donated $1.000.000 to the Wiley College to re-establish a debaters team.

The movie won 5 awards, 4 out of them are Image Awards.


Positive Points:

+Deep and emotional story about racial equality
+Good Director's Message (racial equality)

Rating:81/100
Fun Rating:75%