(2002) Most of us take for granted the meaning of family. Denzel Washington directed this film from an original screenplay by Antwone Fisher, inspired from his own life.

The uncommon aroma of pancakes in the home of Mrs Tate (Viola Davis) signaled a welcome relief from the usual abuses, physical and emotional, visited upon young Antwone from his foster mother where he grew up in Cleveland. Born in 1976 to a woman in prison - his father Edward had been murdered by a girlfriend before Antwone's entrance into the world - who neglected to retrieve him from the orphanage upon her release, he became one of three foster children of Preacher Tate. The Tates' daughter Nadine sexually abused the six-year-old child.

When he finally stood up to his foster mother as a teenager, he was sent back to the orphanage, where light-skinned girls were the first to be adopted followed by light-skinned boys, then dark-skinned girls, and finally dark-skinned boys. Transferred to a reform school in Pennsylvania, the dark-skinned Antwone graduated and returned to Cleveland briefly (dropping in on his best friend Jesse after living on the streets) before enlisting in the US Navy.

Charged with assault on a fellow petty officer (a white boy who used a racial slur), Antwone, in addition to being fined and busted in rank, becomes a patient of Dr Jerome Davenport (Denzel Washington), a psychiatrist, for having a history of repeated acts of violence. For several weeks Antwone refuses to speak, sitting each Wednesday in Commander Davenport's office, until finally opening up by saying he feels like he's "under a rock."

Dr Davenport helps Antwone, possessing artistic talent and learning Japanese, redirect his anger to channel it into less destructive behavior. After meeting for three official sessions and recommending a second chance for Fisher, Davenport finds the seaman back in his office unannounced and insubordinate; in need of a father figure, a mentor, Antwone confesses: "I don't know what to do."

When he begins dating Cheryl Smalley (Joy Bryant), the daughter of a Navy Vietnam vet, also stationed on the naval base in San Diego, he shows up at Dr Davenport's home to say: "She kissed me." Displeased by Antwone's intrusion into his private life, the childless Jerome and his wife Berta (Salli Richardson) are struggling through an emotionally becalmed sea.

Fish reveals to Cheryl his shame of being unwanted. Invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Davenports and their families, Antwone feels embarrassed when Jerome's father Howard asks him about his mother's cooking. Dr Davenport presses upon Antwone the importance of locating his real family if at all possible: he needs to wake up smelling pancakes every morning.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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