This film, based on the true-life story of a high school coach and his relationship with a mentally challenged man, skips the cliches in favor of fine acting and grace.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 23, 2003
[Photo: Columbia Pictures]
Coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris), right, takes James Robert Kennedy (Cuba Gooding Jr.) under his wing in Radio.
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Watch Ed Harris closely in Radio and you'll see an actor working mightily to keep the material from becoming too sentimental. It's a tough gig, since this is one of those relentlessly heartwarming stories about a mentally challenged person improving the lives of people who are smarter, but don't always behave that way.
But Harris is a tough actor, the kind who smells manipulation a mile away and won't tolerate it. Radio desperately needed someone like him, someone who probably scoffed when he first read the script and took the job to prove it could be something different and deeper.
I can envision Harris warning co-star Cuba Gooding Jr. that playing the title role as an overly noble simpleton would be a bad idea. Let the audience come to you, Harris might have suggested. Don't climb into their laps like a puppy. And don't cheat the drama by ultimately appearing smarter, or at least better adjusted, than folks with above-average IQs. Otherwise you wind up with cloying drivel like I Am Sam.
As a result, Radio turns out to be a better movie than even cynical viewers might imagine. Not a great movie, although some will leap to describe it as such. Yet it shows that there is such a thing as graceful schmaltz, manipulation so skillful, the audience doesn't care that strings are being pulled.
Harris plays Harold Jones, head coach of the Hanna High School Yellow Jackets in Anderson, S.C., circa 1975. He's a Bear Bryant-style authority figure, from the style of his hat to his Junction Boys sense of discipline. He's a fair man, unlike those movie portrayals of coaches who antagonize players they're supposed to lead (the kind of coach one might expect a flinty guy like Harris to play).
That fairness makes Jones sympathetic to James Robert Kennedy (Gooding), nicknamed "Radio" because he's so withdrawn at first that nobody in town knows his real name. When Radio endures a cruel hazing by some players, coach Jones punishes the offenders and takes the emotionally damaged young man under his wing, allowing him to help at practices and on the sidelines during games. Not everyone agrees with his plan, especially the barber-chair quarterbacks Jones faces after each game. Radio is a distraction and an embarrassment, say these men, especially town banker Frank Clay (Chris Mulkey), whose son is a star athlete.
It's easy to guess what occurs. Jones and Clay square off a few times. Clay's son (Riley Smith) sets up Radio for a fall. A new police officer, the only person in town who doesn't know Radio is harmless, arrests him on a misunderstanding. Hanna's principal (Alfre Woodard) is concerned about Radio, a man in his 20s, hanging around her students. And Jones will confront his barbershop jury with the syrupy declaration: "We thought we were teaching Radio when all the time he's been teaching us."
Perhaps only Harris could deliver such a line without making us cringe. But the unlikely credibility of such a moment is a cumulative result. Director Michael Tollin sidesteps enough cliches - no "big game" to win, little notice to racial and class differences - to avoid cheapening a true-life story that doesn't require those emotional stunts. Mike Rich's screenplay, like his work on The Rookie, understands sports and athletes. And the entire cast, from Gooding's understated oddness to Debra Winger's supportive wife routine, follow Harris' lead, keeping Radio from becoming just another battered saint melodrama.
By the time the real Radio and Jones are shown in an epilogue, Radio has accomplished - clumsily at times - what it sets out to do. The real Radio likely hasn't capitalized on the positive influence he has been. If he did, he might be insufferable. The best thing about Radio is that its makers realize the same thing about the movie.
Radio
Grade: B
Director: Michael Tollin
Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Debra Winger, Chris Mulkey, Alfre Woodard, Sarah Drew, Riley Smith
