In 1974 Philadelphia, African-American former college swimmer Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) wants a job at prestigious and lily-white Main Line Academy. He’s overqualified for the job, with a great attitude, a background in sports and a degree in mathematics, but his skin color makes his application a hard sell. The head of Main Line sports (Tom Arnold, no less) is “The Bink,” an entitled prick in a plush office who spends his down time perfecting his golf stroke. “Can I be perfectly frank with you?” asks Bink. “That would make my day,” says Ellis. Bink’s flippantly racist dismissal: “I don’t think a person like yourself could properly communicate with our students.”
The Philadelphia Department of Recreation (shortened to PDR for the rest of the film) has lower standards. A tired pencil pusher dismisses Ellis as a “college boy” and asks simply if the applicant has ever been arrested. Sighing that he’s “looking for a job, not a career,” Ellis is soon head of maintenance at a dilapidated, almost-comically neglected recreation center in a part of town where kids have few options for after-school activities – they can shoot hoops outside the center or sell drugs for the local slick-haired pusher-man.
The only other employee at the Marcus Foster rec is Elston, a mutton-chopped sourpuss who spends his work hours sitting in his office watching soap operas. Since Elston is played by Bernie Mac, and since “Pride” never met a sports film clich it didn’t like, you can bet he’ll have a serious change of heart and catch sports fever.
Before long, Ellis is wiping the dust off an abandoned trophy case and staring meaningfully at a placard that says “Life Is What You Make It.” He discovers that the rec has a long-unused swimming pool. Some of the film’s best moments come early on as Ellis sees the pool’s potential and basks in its revitalization, creating a sanctuary for himself and the neighborhood children through sheer will and commitment.
When city officials start dismantling the basketball goals outside, Ellis senses an opportunity. He props open the PDR’s front door, smiles and waits. Soon enough the teens start drifting in to enjoy the pool. At first, the kids are all horseplay, splashing and thrashing and making fun of Ellis’s swimming trunks, but they’re eventually won over by his athletic prowess and his dedication.
The kids want to be a competitive team, with Ellis as coach, and if you’ve ever seen another typical teens-learning-sportsmanship flick (this one gets extra points for being inspired by a true story), you know what’s next. It’s all there in “Pride,” with very little deviation from the formula – the initial defeats, the hard-won tears, the cliffhanger at the climactic national finals and training montages with Howard shouting motivational bon mots like “Reach for it with everything you got, like it’s your last thing in life!”
The film does have an authentically grungy ’70s vibe to it, however, with plenty of well-picked clothes, laughable fros and meticulously-distressed ghetto sets. And director Sunu Gonera taps into something deeper than kitsch with his sober recreation of post-Vietnam, inner-city desolation. Ellis’ victories are far sweeter because he’s bringing hope to a place of such hopelessness, where “some things don’t change” is less a mantra than a promise.
“Pride” casts its loftier ideas aside as the steamroller of feel-good uplift lurches into motion. Only Howard manages to find nuance in the clichs. Mac can’t make heads or tails out of his soft-hearted sidekick, and Kimberly Elise, as the business-minded councilwoman and Ellis’s obligatory love interest, does little to make her character’s changes of heart seem anything more than arbitrary. And there’s the obligatory moment when bad guys trash the pool. In fact, most of the film feels obligatory.
Saddest of all, none of the kids ever come into focus as flesh-and-blood characters. They’re all sketches – the troubled former drug dealer, the nerd with glasses, the clown, the tomboy, the meek stutterer with the heart of gold. These aren’t real people; they’re hollow vessels for cheap inspiration. All too suddenly, the PDR kids have blossomed into respectful star athletes, good enough to make it to the national swimming finals in Baltimore, but the movie doesn’t show the audience how the kids get better. They just do.
The score is all overpowering horns and walloping drum marches. Song choices are jaw-droppingly lazy, with an unoriginal grab bag of ’70s R&B (“It’s Your Thing,” “I’ll Take You There”) that rarely even matches the action onscreen. When the songs do match, they infuriate with their lack of subtlety – “Love Train” over a montage of improvement and growing community support, the rematch with Main Line underscored by James Brown wailing about “the Big Payback.”
And the last 20 minutes are the film’s worst, with the score reaching near-satiric levels of bombast, slo-mo padding out what are already foregone conclusions and heartfelt stinker monologues like one that asserts that the “anchor” of the team “has the biggest heart.” Suppress a cynical laugh as the end credit song unleashes lyrics about rainbows and dreaming to “fly as eagles fly across the sky.”
Yet despite its glaring deficiencies, “Pride” almost works because of Terrence Howard. His Ellis is a man striving for excellence but settling for survival, a cauldron of dignity, strength, sadness and righteous fury that stays on a simmer, boiling over only near the film’s finale. His characterization is remarkably rounded and expansive, full of passion and emotional truth, with room enough for wry humor, winning grace and a quiet, lingering melancholy that hints at battles lost and bitter pills swallowed. The key to this driven man’s psyche comes when Howard, his voice calm, strong but delicate, caresses the declaration, “My life is way too short to be around people who don’t care.”
Watch how he reacts to the kids’ proud initial decision to start the team. It’s a moment of joy for the youngsters, but Howard’s reservation and solemnity hint at hardships to come. When PDR attends its first ill-fated meet at Main Line, Howard plays the scenes with the foreknowledge that his swimmers are going to be embarrassed, but he doesn’t stop it from happening. You can see on his face and in his eyes that he knows the kids will eventually be stronger for their defeat, yet he wrestles with hate for the hard world that makes the lesson necessary. In a movie filled with crocodile tears, Howard’s are the real deal. “Pride” doesn’t deserve his wonderful performance, but it certainly benefits from it.
There’s a strong and inspirational story to be told here, but this film does a thoroughly mediocre job of the telling. “We’ve been chasing dreams for many years,” Ellis tells his team. “Today, you’re gonna have the opportunity to fulfill some of those dreams.” He believes the words, and so will you, but “Pride” can’t tap that spirit to any useful end. It treads water when Howard is front and center but sinks like a stone in his absence.
PRIDE
Lions Gate Films
Rated PG
STARRING:
Terrence Howard, Bernie Mac, Kimberly Elise and Tom Arnold
THE VERDICT:
While there is a decent story under the surface of “Pride,” the characters and plot stay mostly in the shallow end.
2/4 stars