The Visit

The visit is a very good movie therapeutic to help people understand the consequences of violence, rape, unprotected sex drug abuse in life in urban city. I use this movie and my substance abuse, domestic violence and perinatal substance abuse education I would recommend this movie to all clinical specialist therapist substance abuse, counselors. If possible, you can write questions and have summaries to give positive feedback and learning experiences from this movie. I highly recommend it for ages 15 and above it will change once perspective of life for a positive change. All actors were real and motivating that each played their role to the extreme of a believable movie.

"The Visit" tells the story of a young convicted rapist and AIDS victim (Harper) in prison, the visits he receives from family and friends which resurrect old issues, and his final quest for resolution and purpose. On the upside "The Visit" is a solid drama which is short on entertainment and long on meaning, interspersed with surreal dream-like sequences, backed with a plaintive jazz score, cloaked in very unprison-like atmospherics, offers excellent performances, and avoids cliches and stereotypes. However, the film's theatrical presentation and somewhat vague purpose may limit audience appeal to more serious minded film goers and fans of the players. (B)

I saw this movie last Sunday at the Method Fest in Pasadena, CA. While I must admit that I went simply because Hill Harper was in it, it turned out to be an excellent movie. It moved me. It made me cry, laugh and think. Billy Dee Williams and Marla Gibbs reminded me, in some respects, of my parents. Rae Dawn Chong also reminded me of a relative. Hill Harper's character moved me most, you feel his pain, you know his character is innocent. He is an excellent actor and I'd really like to see much more of him on the big screen.

The synergy of the entire cast was wonderful. They fed off of each other's energy. But of course, without a wonderful director, there is no wonderful film. I would really like to see this film again, I'd like to own a video copy. I hope this film can find it's way into major theaters, it really deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

Any film about a young black male in prison just BEGS for rhetoric. Add AIDS in the mix, and the traps are everywhere.

This film manages to illuminate more than one of the issues involved in both subjects without ever becoming tendentious or trite. And it does so largely because of the deeply felt work of Hill Harper and the other actors involved. Through shades of rage, neediness, fear, frustration and the most affecting, immediate, infant love, Harper brings us right to the heart of a man who knows he's done wrong, but nonetheless has been done greater wrong.

With all the complex personal and political issues at play here, what shines through and holds the film is the raw, heartbreaking yearning of the main character.

Not that larger situations aren't observed. When his successful businessman brother (played by Obba Bobatunde) comes to visit, the obligatory search by a guard becomes one more humiliation of a black man. This isn't underlined - it's simply shown. His father's rant about how young blacks become what many whites already think they are could come right out of an article on the subject - except that he's talking about his son and the father (uncompromisingly played by Billy Dee Williams)is being his pompous self-satisfied self.

A number of other vignettes refer to larger issues without every losing sight of the specific human stories that we're following.

Everybody in the cast is superb without being flashy: simply real. Rae Dawn Chong remains believable even when her character's relentlessly positive character borders on the Pollyannaish. It's not a surprise that she's luminous in these scenes - that over-used word applies more appropriately to Chong than almost any other actress -, but in the flashbacks showing her as a crack whore she becomes every bit as beaten down and dispairing as she is radiant in redemption.

Also, two scenes are fascinating simply for the freedom of interplay that the director manages to achieve - the parole board's part pompous, part compassionate negotiations and the extended dialogue between Harper and Chong's characters during her first visit. In both, there is that Cassavetes quality of a scene almost veering out of control while continuing to convey its dramatic point.

Though several scenes take place in a church, the film avoids the increasingly cliched use of a gospel choir to suddenly provide an emotional uplift. Yet nontheless, towards the end, we are treated to an extended montage over a unique version of "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" by the sublime Sweet Honey in the Rock.

That kind of tasteful deflection of expectations informs the whole film. It's really a wonderful piece of work.

This movie will change the way you think.

Sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit, Alex (HILL HARPER, He Got Game) must now fight to win his parole. His fight, however, is not with the prison authorities, but with himself. From behind the jail cell bars Alex looks on at the middle class life he left behind and his brother Tony (OBBA BABATUNDE, Life) who now has everything Alex does not. Visits from his parents (BILLY DEE WILLIAMS, MARLA GIBBS), his childhood sweetheart (RAE DAWN CHONG) and the prison psychiatrist (PHYLICIA RASHAD) start to rebuild Alex. Each visit teaches him to love not just the world, but himself. As this spiritual adventure of the heart reaches its unexpected climax, Alex shows us how we can all become better people when we face the demons inside us.

I really, really love this film, and think I am much better off for having seen it.