Against all odds, his story is told

Like the individual it’s named after, a man who wrote the screenplay of the film based on his own life and then had to wait nearly a decade to see it arrive on screen, “Antwone Fisher” is the story of obstacles overcome.

Not only is it unusual that this emotional story of how a damaged boy became a whole man made it to the screen at all, it is a measure of its strengths that it overcomes storytelling flaws that would have disabled a weaker project. For there are moments when this film plays as overly earnest and conventional, moments when issues resolve too tidily or do not resolve at all.

But because you’d have to be a stone not to be moved by “Antwone Fisher’s” story of hope, forgiveness and love, its focus on the power of the family to heal what it once destroyed, those difficulties seem insignificant and beside the point compared to the good things that are going on.

These strengths go further than a vibrant acting debut by star Derek Luke and a satisfying first time behind the camera for co-star Denzel Washington. They go beyond the film’s willingness to skirt the sentimental in showing a world that feels real even though affirming things happen there, a world where even the worst stories can have positive endings.

Rarest and most impressive of all, “Antwone Fisher” is a serious drama set in the African American community, one that showcases powerful, confrontational scenes between black actors that compel attention while making you wonder why you might have to go as far back as Charles Burnett’s neglected 1990 “To Sleep With Anger” to find the last time that was done.

Because films like this are so difficult to get made, it’s likely that only the presence of someone of Denzel Washington’s stature as co-star and director got it done. It took years until he could find the time and the mental energy to direct, just as it took years for the real Antwone Fisher, helped by producer Todd Black and others, to get his life into an “Inspired by a True Story” screenplay form that Hollywood could accept.

Fisher’s is a tale both individual and prototypical, one that echoes “Ordinary People” in its emphasis on how therapy can change lives but one that also gives us a sense that we’re seeing things we’ve not often seen before.

Antwone Fisher has not been on screen for many minutes before it is clear that this Navy enlisted man has a true powder-keg temper, a bottled-up rage that needs only the slightest provocation to erupt into savage brawls. Not even his tentative romantic interest in a beautiful fellow sailor (a debuting Joy Bryant) can take the edge off his fury.

Fisher is sent, and not for the first time, to see a naval psychiatrist to deal with the rage. What’s different this time is that the therapist is Jerome Davenport (Washington), someone who has the patience to outlast Fisher’s studied what’s-it-to-you indifference and his sullen “I got nothing to say” conversational style.

Building this relationship is not a straight-line endeavor, as the often-betrayed Fisher is always willing to assume that the psychiatrist is just another deceiver. But Davenport gradually does break through, and what he finds is a Dickensian childhood where each horror is succeeded by one even more grotesque.

Fisher, it turns out, was born in prison two months after his father was murdered. He was turned over to the state, and when his mother did not come for him on her release, he spent his entire childhood in foster homes, including one run by Mrs. Tate (Novella Nelson) that had tortures of an especially toxic kind.

As Fisher struggles with his temper and with Davenport’s suggestion that he try to find his family so he can get on with his life, the therapist, in one of the film’s least convincing elements, struggles with a marriage that seems unduly distant and restrained.

If “Antwone Fisher” works in fits and starts, that cannot be said of Luke’s performance in the title role. The young actor has great presence on screen, bringing this character with a formidable chip on his shoulder alive in an unforced way. He makes Antwone’s stillness, his sweetness and his violence equally believable and compelling.

Much of the credit for this goes to Washington, who has wisely avoided getting distracted by technical fripperies and has instead concentrated in his directing debut on infusing his distinctively natural style on his young cast. Seeing an actor of his stature so capably mentoring a younger generation is yet another thing that makes “Antwone Fisher” so satisfying and so against the odds.

*

‘Antwone Fisher’

MPAA rating: PG-13, for violence, language and mature thematic material involving abuse.

Times guidelines: Adult subject matter dealing with child abuse.

Derek Luke...Antwone Fisher

Denzel Washington...Jerome Davenport

Joy Bryant...Cheryl

Salli Richardson...Berta

Novella Nelson...Mrs. Tate

Viola Davis...Eva

Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Director Denzel Washington. Producers Todd Black, Randa Haines, Denzel Washington. Executive producer Nancy Paloian-Breznikar. Screenplay Antwone Fisher. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. Editor Conrad Buff. Costume designer Sharen Davis. Music Mychael Danna. Production design Nelson Coates. Art director David S. Lazan. Set decorator Anne McCulley. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes. In limited release.