The Great Debaters

This was a decent film. Predictable but well made. I think Denzel did a very good job directing and the actors were respectable. The premise of the movie is pretty cool even though there has been a FLOOD of racially-motivated movies for past 10 years. I believe it is an American thing where here in Canada, folks don't seem to notice as much. My guess is that the black community has to make an effort to promote strength and the mind a lot more (see quotes in this movie) There is plenty of good intellectual material to chew on and moving scenes (lynch mob, pig on the road) Music is pretty good (blues & gospel is authentic) but the violins were a little overdone in the climax of the speeches. Nonetheless, one glaring factor that really threw off my wife and I is in the last scene, the Wiley debaters quote the number of deaths in a war against the Germans and Hitler. The movie was supposed to be taking place in 1935, so we thought they made a huge mistake in referring to WWII which had not even started yet. We had to go home and research that WWI featured Hitler as a soldier. I still think it's a bit weird because of the timing of Hitler's rise to power and the references in this movie (he was only a soldier in WWI, not the sadistic leader we all recognize him as from WWII)