Movie Review: "Pride"
The premise of "Pride" is what people don't say out loud —blacks don't swim —and Jim Ellis, portrayed by Terrence Howard, paired with gruff Bernie Mac as a janitor hanging around the run down rec center, challenges those pre-conceived notions. Howard plays the role right, slipping Ellis into a job beneath his ability, quietly aching with the realization that some people, white and black, refuse to judge people as individuals. Among them are the kids he takes into the water, who must learn by losing, and the scenes of them learning the principles of drag, breathing and cupping are "Pride's" best. When the city removes the hoop from the basketball court outside, he invites a group of teens inside to cool off. All he asks is that they follow the "no clowning" rules. Burly, but not thuggish, Andre (Kevin Phillips) challenges his authority by betting he can outswim Howard. He's wrong, and soon Howard takes the boys from swim lessons to a registered swim team: the PDR, Philadelphia Department of Recreation, or "Pride, Determination, Resilience."
This ture story, a swimmer's story, of college graduate and ex-swimmer Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) who uses personal adversity to shape a winning team is one of great passion and exposure to the realities blacks faced. He does so by coaching, this after surviving a humiliating meet in the South's Tar Heel state, North Carolina, in 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was passed, and blacks like him, were gaining recognition of their rights. The kids—an ace swimmer girl joins the team along the way—are played by a band of heartfelt, though somewhat gym bodied actors. One has a guardian sister (always reliable Kimberly Elise) who's a councilwoman that wants to close the center, another stutters, another needs to get past his bad attitude to tap his potential, and they are all coasting on clichés. The real villains, of course, are white people, which is fine in this context, especially Tom Arnold with...