Brehm Center

Radio is ostensibly a sports movie. Mike Rich, whose screenplay for The Rookie became one of 2002’s pleasant surprises, wrote the script.  His inspiration was Gary Smith’s heartwarming, 1996 article in Sport’s Illustrated entitled “Someone to Lean On.” Smith’s human-interest feature told the true story of a small-town, white, Southern high school football coach who befriends a mentally handicapped African –American youth.  This withdrawn young man had spent much of his teenage years walking around the streets of Anderson, South Carolina pushing a shopping cart with a radio in it (thus his nickname). But different than Hoosiers where the goal is winning the game, or even The Rookie where the goal is fulfilling one’s vocation by finally playing the game, Radio is intent on broadcasting a different type of story – one more about the people than the game. We are let in on the human story behind this sport story. In the process, we are reminded of who we are as well.

            Centering on the unlikely friendship between these two people, Radio is not a plot-driven movie. We as viewers do not ultimately care by the movie’s end who wins the league championship (though some of the booster club does!). There is, in fact, little suspense generated about the season’s record, and the little that there is, is not overly convincing (a belligerent father who thinks Radio is a distraction to the team and gets a school board lawyer involved in trying to keep Radio off the school grounds). But as a character-driven story, the movie excels.

            As James Robert “Radio” Kennedy, Cuba Gooding Jr. redeems himself after a string of failed roles following his Oscar for Jerry Maguire.  There is no over-the-top “give me the money” in his portrayal here. Instead, Gooding offers a sympathetic, yet quirky, portrayal of a handicapped person, someone “the same as everybody else, just a little slower than most,” as his mother describes him. The target of jokes and teasing, some perhaps racist and all cruel, Radio has a gentleness of heart, a childlike self-giving, and a kindness toward others that prove redemptive to many he encounters. And Ed Harris, as Coach Harold Jones, simply carries the movie. A workaholic who struggles to show his real affection for his wife Linda (Debra Winger) and teenaged daughter Mary Helen (newcomer Sarah Drew), Jones is portrayed by Harris to be a man of strength and decency – a quiet hero who does what is right irrespective of the cost.

Both Gooding’s and Harris’ characters could easily have been sentimentalized or overstated, for the storyline makes both of these “real life” persons almost too good to be true. What makes the movie’s story so compelling is that the audience comes to believe in both of them and in their unique friendship. Theirs is life as it was intended to be. When, as the movie ends, we are shown a title, “26 Years Later,” and the real-life Radio leads the Hanna High School football team out onto the field for a game, and then the actual Coach Jones is seen being given an award, and hugging Radio, it is difficult not to cry. Surely there were more struggles and suffering than we were shown, but what might be otherwise dismissed as Pollyanna, turns out to be, in fact, real. The moment is deeply moving, even transformative.

            Early in the movie, Coach Jones is asked why he is doing what he is doing. “I figure it’s the right thing to do,” is his matter-of-fact reply. But there is much more behind his stoic response. Later in the movie, as he struggles to connect with his high-school aged daughter, Jones confesses to a long-kept secret about a childhood failure to act compassionately and justly. When given the opportunity, he is not about to fail a second time.

            This movie portrays the dignity of the human – all humans. It also portrays our God-given ability to do right if we would but be sensitive to that “law” which is written on our hearts and which our own consciences bear witness (Romans 2:14-16). And Radio shows audiences the importance of getting one’s priorities straight. With pressures on all of us to excel in our studies, our jobs, our careers, we need those “secular saints” like Coach Jones to help us keep our perspective.

            Standing with his wife and daughter, Coach Jones says to the locals who have caucused at the local barbershop to criticize his mediocre season, “I love football. But that’s not what’s important now…(Radio’s) been teaching us. The way he treats us all the time is the way we wish we treated each other some of the time. So I’m stepping down from coaching and I want to spend more time with those I’ve neglected.” We get the feeling that this “resignation” will be challenged. But it doesn’t matter. The lesson learned, both by Coach Jones and by us is that some things -- family and friendship – cannot be relegated to the sidelines. They require our commitment and our perseverance.

Robert K. Johnston

Catherine M. Barsotti

November 15, 2003