Pride (Widescreen Edition)

Teaching Pride through Swimming
Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) loves to swim. During the 60's, he joined his schools swim team, which created problems. Jim is African American, and the white competitors in North Carolina weren't happy to be competing against him.

10 years later, Jim has landed in Philadelphia. Despite his credential to teach math, the only job he can get is cleaning out the recreation center in the poor part of town. It's scheduled to be torn down soon. The only person inside the building is maintenance man Elston (Bernie Mac). The closest anyone else comes to it is playing basketball outside.

That changes one day when the basketball hoops are taken down in the march toward tearing down the center. As five of the guys stand there fuming about the loss of the hoops, Jim invites them in to use the pool.

Slowly, Jim gains their trust and begins to teach them the fundamentals of swimming. They gain enough skill to ask to go to a meet, hoping to meet women. But do...

Exceptional Movie
My mother was so stubborn about me seeing this movie. From the looks of it, all I saw was another sports movie where the coach teaches some young, troubled kids how to find something productive to do with their time. But when I sat down to watch it, I understood why she wanted me to see this movie so much. What an excellent movie! Not only did it deal with sports and troubled kids, it dealt with male guidance, race issues, segregation, and the strength of young men trying to fight against seeking into dangerous backgrounds to be productive parts of society. Every single person in this movie deserved the part that he or she played. Terrence Howard was outstanding as usual. Bernie Mac was about as charismatic as always. I loved all of the young swimmers' parts, especially the stubborn and quickest one and Diana Ross' son too. The dialogue, the pace, and the plot kept me interested throughout the entire movie. I talked to the screen on more than a few occasions.

Pride, Determination, Resilience
PRIDE does not open any new doors in the genre of film biopics of teachers who raise the status of downtrodden students to the point of genuine appreciation of self worth. The story has been told countless times with different characters, both male and female, different races (African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, etc), and different areas of the United States. But despite the recurring similarity of heart-on-the-sleeve stories such as this, PRIDE stands solidly on its own merits, in part due to the well developed and written screenplay by Kevin Michael Smith, Michael Gozzard, J. Mills Goodloe, and Norman Vance Jr. based on the life and contributions to society of Jim Ellis, in part due to the sensitive direction of Sunu Gonera, and in part due to the fine cast. The idea behind the story may not be new, but PRIDE is a fine example of the genre.

Opening in the 1960s we meet Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard) as a superior swimmer unable to use his gifts because of his race...

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