WORTH A WATCH: FORGOTTEN FOUR
WORTH A WATCH ...
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:
KEY CAST MEMBERS: Cincinnati Bengals Principal Owner Mike Brown, the children of Kenny Washington, Marion Motley, Bill Willis and Woody Strode and a bunch of historians and civil rights people you likely haven't heard of before watching this film unless you're REALLY involved in that community.
DIRECTOR(S): Ross Greenburg
WEB SITE: http://www.epixhd.com/forgotten-four-the-integration-of-pro-football/THE STORY: Thanks to the Hollywood movie 42, Major League Baseball and just about any story of the Civil Rights movement, Jackie Robinson is the man credited for showing that African-Americans could not play in professional sports with their white counterparts, but excel as well. But without four men – Robinson's former UCLA football teammates Kenny Washington, Woody Strode as well as Marion Motley and Bill Willis – he might never have had the chance to make history?
Forgotten Four (EPIX Originals) takes a look at the four former collegiate/NFL players and the struggles they faced before and after breaking professional football's color barrier in 1946 and the impact they had on setting the stage for Robinson and the countless others that would follow in their footsteps.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: While it is certainly not without its flaws – it's loaded with standard talking heads and no interviews/audio clips with the actual men profiled that lacks the flair of say an ESPN 30 For 30-style documentary – Forgotten Four is an informative film about four overlooked athletes and the significance of their, while not widely known today, legacies.
Featuring interviews with Washington, Strode, Motley and Willis children and grandchildren as well as Brown (whose father Paul is largely credited with being a pioneer not only on the field but off it), Forgotten Four is short (59 minutes) but does a good job at giving each man his due. The personal stories are, as one might expect, the best part of the film, but not when told by their families as much as it is their white counterparts to see how they were affected by the four heroes' actions. Ironically, the abbreviated run time is almost mirrors the four men's legacies: For as it is noted in the film, America usually chooses one man to be "the one" as it did with Robinson, but Forgotten Four does a good job at giving you the untold story preceding the widely known, celebrated story ... Even if what we know isn't everything we should.
WHERE TO WATCH IT: EPIX, starting Tuesday, Sept. 23 (http://www.epixhd.com/)
Featuring interviews with Washington, Strode, Motley and Willis children and grandchildren as well as Brown (whose father Paul is largely credited with being a pioneer not only on the field but off it), Forgotten Four is short (59 minutes) but does a good job at giving each man his due. The personal stories are, as one might expect, the best part of the film, but not when told by their families as much as it is their white counterparts to see how they were affected by the four heroes' actions. Ironically, the abbreviated run time is almost mirrors the four men's legacies: For as it is noted in the film, America usually chooses one man to be "the one" as it did with Robinson, but Forgotten Four does a good job at giving you the untold story preceding the widely known, celebrated story ... Even if what we know isn't everything we should.
WHERE TO WATCH IT: EPIX, starting Tuesday, Sept. 23 (http://www.epixhd.com/)
OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):
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