Antwone Fisher (2002)

Starring: Derek Luke and Denzel Washington, with small roles from Viola Davis, Vernee Watson-Johnson, Kevin Connolly, Sung Kang, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Grade: A-

We need to see Derek Luke in more things. This dude is underrated.

Summary

Following a dream sequence, where we see a young Antwone Fisher joining a dinner table as a child being surrounded by friends and family, we see a now grown Fisher (Luke) wake up. Currently, he’s in the Navy. After waking up and getting ready, known asshole Petty Officer Berkley greets him, and it almost immediately turns into a fight, with Fisher attacking him until they have to be separated. Despite him telling his superior it was provoked by a racial slur, the man sides with Berkley who denies it. Fisher is fined $200 for two months, has to pick up extra work, and is brought down a class. Furthermore, his superior will be recommending he be evaluated at the psychiatric clinic. At the clinic, he goes in to meet Dr. Jerome Davenport (Washington). The calm and collected Davenport tries to get to know Fisher a bit, but Fisher doesn’t give him an inch, insisting he doesn’t have any problems whatsoever. He’s even asked about his parents, but he retorts he has none. Davenport accepts this but sets up next week’s meeting with him, despite Fisher saying he’s not coming back. Fisher goes to the bookstore to pick something up and runs into Petty Officer Second Class Cheryl Smolley (Joy Bryant), a girl he clearly likes. She invites him to a party, but he is forced to turn it down because he’s on restriction again because of the incident.

Later, it’s time for another meeting with Davenport. Since he assumed Fisher was going to try to avoid him, Davenport gets two seamen to escort Fisher to his office. He explains to Fisher that he only gets three sessions with him to make an evaluation and a recommendation to his commanding officer, who already wants to throw Fisher out of the Navy. Fisher still doesn’t want to talk, but Davenport says that the sessions don’t start until Fisher says something to him. Fisher doesn’t budge and recommends Davenport throw him in the brig. Instead, Davenport has him sit on the couch in his office while he does work until it’s time to go. They do this for several more meetings until Fisher decides to give him a bit of info after realizing how much time has been wasted.

He didn’t know his father very well, not even knowing his last name. He was shot and killed by his ex-girlfriend during an argument. His mother was in prison when this happened. While still in prison and two months after his father was murdered, she had Fisher. He was sent directly to an orphanage until his mother got out to claim him. However, when she got out, she never came for him. The session concludes with Fisher saying he never reached out to his mother after Davenport asks. The good news is that they agree to meet again next week. That night, we start to get to learn more about Davenport. Ironically enough, we see a glimpse of his bad communication skills with his wife Berta (Salli Richardson). At their next meeting together, Fisher goes more in-depth about his life as a child, and we see it presented onscreen in a flashback. When he was two, he was placed in the Tate foster home that was centered around Reverend Tate (Ellis Williams) and his small church. Some of the attendees were Mrs. Tate (Novella Nelson), Cousin Nadine (Yolonda Ross), his foster brothers Keith and Dwight, and himself. Reverend Tate hated Dwight and beat the hell out of him, but he didn’t beat Fisher. The real problem for Fisher was Mrs. Tate, who abused him mentally, emotionally, and physically. She would practically torture him when he did something wrong. In these flashback sequences, we see him being tied up and beaten. At one point, he gets threatened with a stick that was set on fire. The evil Mrs. Tate would also figure out ways to pit Fisher and his two foster brothers against each other, like saying Keith was better than the other two because he was half-white.

Davenport asked the whereabouts of his foster brothers, but Fisher tells him Dwight is in a state prison, and Keith was taken in by his mother. Unfortunately, he was raped by one of his mother’s boyfriends. Davenport tries to pry and ask if something like that ever happened to him, but he denies it. Following this, they talk about some of the rare, good times Mrs. Tate would be nice to them before the session concludes.

At the next session, we learn Fisher had a best friend named Jesse that he dreamt about the night before. He liked Jesse because he wouldn’t beat Fisher up. They were inseparable, and Mrs. Tate hated it. Eventually, Fisher and Mrs. Tate got into an argument over him hanging with Jesse at the movie theater, and it led to Tate kicking him out of the house once he stopped her from beating him with her shoe. Hearing this, Davenport gives him a book called The Slave Community. He argues that what he dealt with was in part a result of the treatment slaves received from their masters and then passed on to their children from generation to generation. Essentially, this mentality was passed all the way down to the Tate family. They talk things out a bit further on how he can channel his anger, and Davenport seems to be making a breakthrough. The sad part is that when Fisher asks to talk more at their next meeting, Davenport says this is officially their last session. Even so, he will be recommending Fisher get a second chance to stay in the Navy. An angered Fisher storms out and immediately runs into Cheryl. She tries to talk to him, but he’s short with her and leaves quickly. Back on the ship, he tries to read The Slave Community, but a couple of the shipmates make fun of him. The situation escalates quickly, with Fisher starting another fight. Back in Davenport’s office, Fisher is in the lobby criticizing Davenport’s methods in front of several patients and Davenport, infuriating him. Davenport takes Fisher into his office and yells at him, with Fisher leaving, saying he doesn’t know what to do in life now.

After some minimal conversation between Davenport and his wife that night, Davenport goes to Fisher’s ship the next day, asking him to meet up for another session next week. Fisher is noncommittal about it, but we already know the answer. Later, he waits outside the bookstore to talk to Cheryl, and he’s able to apologize to her for his previous behavior. They agree to meet up for a date.

Finally, some good news.

He meets with Davenport and the meeting goes well, with Davenport giving him dating advice. The trust is back, and Davenport even gives him his number, saying he’ll be available day or night to talk to. The road to Antwone Fisher’s recovery begins now. However, the mental blocks from his life continue to be an issue for him as he tries to better himself.

My Thoughts

Antwone Fisher is a complicated true story of heartbreak, trauma, death, and family, amongst a myriad of other themes. This was a very emotional project that needed delicate hands to be administered correctly. Despite Denzel Washington being a first-time director and this being star Derek Luke’s first big role, they managed to knock this one out the park, bringing Antwone Fisher’s heartbreaking story to life.

Beforehand, I only heard of the name “Antwone Fisher” but never the actual story behind it all. Learning about the man can shock you to your core. By the age of twenty-five, Fish went through every awful thing imaginable. The amount of pain and suffering he had to overcome just to get where he’s at is something that has to be seen to be believed. In the beginning, you’re not so sure about him because of how quickly he jumps the gun to violence. He’s angry, he doesn’t want to talk, and he reacts to everything out of pure emotion. Fish thinks everything is a slight against him. As you may know, someone who is as angry as this young man is not this angry for no good reason. You don’t need a psychiatrist to tell you it all stems from somewhere. Whether it be because of the people in his life, the environment he lived in, or the events that happened along the way, something led to Fish becoming the disgruntled person he is. As we found out over the course of this film, it comes from all three. Fish says it himself, “It felt like rainy days. For a kid that wants to go out and play, it seems like it rains every day. I expect it to rain, but for one kid, it rained too much”.

Boy, did it rain for poor Fish.

This kid’s entire upbringing was traumatic. It’s the type of childhood that can make or break you, and he had plenty of chances to break. We wouldn’t blame him if he did! Somehow, he managed to make it to the Navy, despite a life of crime being very possible to turn to like his foster brother Dwight or his best friend Jesse. When you look at all the stuff Fish went through and survived, you’d think this was all created to make you feel bad for our main character, but this story is very real. The real Antwone Fisher wrote the screenplay and the book based on his life that the movie was adapted from. These are real experiences this troubled man managed to find himself in and out of. As dark as it can be, it’s inspiring. He’s able to overcome the worst of the worst, showing how god-awful humanity can be at times but also how strong the human spirit can be when faced with evil. All he needed was a little coaching from Dr. Davenport, played by a very caring and heartfelt Denzel Washington. You can see how the material speaks to Washington. His performance comes from the heart. It’s like he wants to be the man that gave Fish a positive influence to talk to. This important figure in Fish’s life resonated with him emotionally, and you can see how much Washington cares with how well he handles the story in the director’s chair.

Davenport’s friendship with Fish is very important to the film because it’s the first real friendship Fish has had since his childhood best friend. He trusts him with his life, once Davenport’s slow and methodical process starts to win him over. This is why we trust Davenport right off the bat. Though it does help that we are very familiar with Denzel Washington, it’s his approach as Davenport that wins us over this time. He could’ve sent the disrespectful Fish straight to the brig and got his ass kicked out of the Navy right from the start, but he cares about his job as a psychiatrist. He cares about his patients. You see the key word here? He cares, and it shows. Once Fish sees Davenport’s sincerity, the mood changes. He sees the type of person Fish is, so he lets Fish know that it’s up to him to start talking. Davenport isn’t going to lecture or force questions. He wants Fish to open up first, so he feels comfortable. If he forces the conversation, Fish might stay closed up, and they won’t get anywhere. Once they start to talk more in their meetings and get closer, the movie gets better and better because we want to know more about Fisher and his story. However, just like Davenport, we don’t want to rush things, even as an audience. There are times in these sessions where we want to savor the moment. We want to hear all the details as Fisher explains them, so we can fully understand why he’s like the way he is.

Hearing Fish tell the horror stories of Mrs. Tate and how it affected him, accompanied by a series of flashbacks of the evil woman, is as heartbreaking as they come. Mrs. Tate is one hell of a villain too. She’s played too well by Novella Nelson. She feels like a cross between Kathy Bates in Misery and Kathy Bates in The Waterboy (Weird that these are both Kathy Bates roles).

Her efforts to demean her foster children and abuse them, while overusing the n-word to the point where she stops calling them by their actual names, is frightening. What’s even more horrific is that she willingly took these kids in. She’s the only home these three boys have. This is their sanctuary? This is the home they get to go back to after a long day? It’s absolute hell to imagine a kid having to live through that, never mind three! Derek Luke did a wonderful job in the starring role. The man puts us through a whirlwind of emotions throughout the course of this story, as he tries to navigate through this difficult life. You want him to succeed so bad. It’s not even because he’s a misunderstood and likable young man, it’s because no one deserves to go through this much pain in a lifetime. Even when he’s gone through so much therapy and is in a much better place in life, he almost relapses to violence again when Davenport tells him their therapy sessions are over the second time. On the verge of regression, he starts blaming himself for trusting the loving Davenport and getting mad at himself for another person leaving his life that he cares about, leading to his conversation about what happened to Jesse. This is how much suffering he has dealt with. After all these years, he lets his guard down for a bit and feels as if life has come back and hit him with a gut punch as soon as he got comfortable.

In a flashback, we see Jesse taking in Fish after he was homeless and using an unknowing Fish for backup as he tries to hold up a convenience store. You can see Fish’s face once Jesse is shot in front of him. The blood splatters onto him, and he just stands there, stone-faced. It was the last straw. Up until that point, Jesse was the only person he connected with. He had no one else, and he just saw him get shot and killed. There were no tears. For some reason, that’s all we needed. For the amount of terror and heartbreak Fish has already been through, it’s as if Fish expected the worst to come out of this. He got too comfortable with this one friend, and it backfired. Since he had nothing left, he enlisted.

It all leads him to this one moment with Davenport and how it feels as if he is leaving Fish too. However, that’s just it. It shows how different Davenport is. He’s not necessarily leaving his life, but he is a good enough friend to tell him that he’s ready to move on in life even though he knows how tough it may be on Fish. It’s not just a patient/doctor relationship. It’s a true friendship because we know how his sessions with Fish, reflects in his home. In the closing moments of the film, Davenport hits Fish with powerful words: “You don’t owe me anything. I owe you”. Some may call it sappy, but I felt this line was important in showing him owning up to his faltering relationship with his wife and how he closed up on her, mirroring what Fish did to him at first. He has to practice what he preaches. After dealing with this distressed young man in need of guidance, he came to the realization that he’s not all-knowing either. We see the seeds planted for Davenport to address this throughout, and it’s a nice insightful detail added to this seemingly perfect person that was needed to add some depth to the character.

Fish can’t continuously hold on to Davenport as a crutch though. At some point, he has to see he can move on to the next stage in his life. It’s a tough decision for the both of them, but Davenport’s job is to make these decisions. As a sympathetic person, it’s hard to watch Antwone almost fall apart after seeing him get so far, but it’s even more triumphant following the conversation he has with him, realizing he is indeed ready. Even then, Fish asks him, “You think I’ll make it?”. Davenport tells him he already has, and it’s true. If he’s already made it this far, he’s going to have a bright and successful future. He just needs to tie up loose ends. This is a big part of the success of Antwone Fisher: the importance of closure. The last thing Davenport continuously asks him to do to complete his therapy is to find his real family to make sure there are no remaining questions about his life. Though Fish is now an accomplished man that has achieved many goals and is on the road to success, he can’t fully move on mentally until he’s cleared up everything that has happened in his past.

In a way, you have to overcome your past to exist in the present and reach your future.

If you like that line, give me credit for it.

Fish asks a very reasonable question to Davenport, “Why do I have to forgive?”. Why should he, right? After everything he was put through, why should he give them the benefit of the doubt? Davenport responds with, “…To free yourself”. He’s right. Though they don’t deserve the time of day, this is something that crosses the mind of many in the same situation. You’re always left wondering “What if?” and “Why?” forever, unless you reach out. No matter what happens once the meet-up is finally achieved, you can close the door, move on with your life, and never look back. Closure is a very important part in the healing process. This is where we get the extremely powerful scene in which the now grown-up Fisher finds Mrs. Tate and Nadine for the first time since he was a young kid. (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS) What makes this scene so powerful isn’t just Fish standing up to these despicable people, but it’s seeing that nothing changed with them. This old home is exactly the way he left it. Even the cinematography compliments the scene by going back to the dreariness of the flashbacks, with blues and darker colors presented in the scene and in the neighborhood, reminding us how this is the black mark in Fish’s life he’s revisiting. Tate and Nadine greet him and act like nothing is wrong, thinking he just came back to celebrate old times. They never take responsibility for their actions, especially Nadine who straight-up molested him when he was six.

By the way, that flashback scene was unforgettable. Though we thankfully didn’t see anything, we heard it, and it rang in our ears for the rest of the film, just as it probably does to Fish every waking day of his life.

Anyway, for her to open the door and try to give Fish a hug and deny what happened between them, was next-level infuriating. They even try to act tough until he takes command, showing the two he means business. It would’ve been easy to flip out even more, but he handles it so maturely. This is the new and improved Fish, and you can’t help but feel proud of the man. It was triumphant. After raising his voice and saying what he came to say, they sit there in disbelief. Tate can’t do anything but respond to his sole question of what his father’s name was and letting him leave without a fight. The first door is closed, never needing to be reopened. As tough as this was for a trauma victim, how can you not feel empowered following a scene like that? When he is able to talk to his Aunt Annette Elkins (Watson-Johnson) over the phone about his deceased father, and they both come to the realization that he’s found his family, you start to feel joy for the first time in a while. That phone call was incredibly touching not only because of Fish willing to lay it all on the line for some stranger in the middle of the night, but also her responding to his energy with positivity, sounding just as happy to hear from him as he is to her. It’s as though he will finally get closer to moving on. We can feel it. Even though he hasn’t met his mother just yet, we know with this scene, after a very heart-warming performance by Vernee Watson-Johnson in a small role, we’re right there, and it’s leading to something good.

He meets her and her family members, and he’s told that his mother lives nearby and is asked if he wants to meet her. In Derek Luke’s face, you can see all of the different emotions going through his mind at a rapid pace. Even though this is what he wants and even needs, his immediate uncertainty when faced with this moment reminds us that what is about to happen will change his life forever. Even when he gets to his mother’s apartment, he’s still weary and hangs outside the door after it’s opened. He’s deciding whether he’s strong enough yet to finally close this chapter on his life, and it’s very tough to watch because we know what he’s been through. We know he’s been thinking about this moment every day of his life and now that it’s here, the anxiousness of the moment has gotten to him, and he doesn’t know what to do. It’s a raw and emotional climax.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

When we finally get to the climax of the film, with Fish meeting his mom, the scene is eerily quiet as he pours his heart out to her. It’s a very poignant sequence because we know everything that’s happened in Fish’s life and that everything in this film has led us to this moment. It was handled so well and though Viola Davis doesn’t say much, as you can see the regret in her stone face (maybe that’s where he got it from), she is able to make her mark. When you add in the tender, uplifting ending at the dinner table, with the matriarch of the family telling the innocent Fish “Welcome”, I was beaming with happiness. Very rarely do you feel that good for a main character at the end of a film. It made it all feel worth it. When you evoke these types of emotions from a viewer, you know you did what you set out to do.

It’s heart-wrenching, it’s powerful, it’s sad, it’s frustrating, and it’s everything. Denzel Washington turns an incredible true story into a film about overcoming the tragedies of one’s past, powered by a wonderful debut from Derek Luke. Antwone Fisher can put you through a rollercoaster of emotions, but if you’re paying attention, there’s a good chance you’ll walk out with a smile.