Music Within

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against qualified people with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and governmental activities. This act was passed in 1990.

Ron Livingston is Richard Pimentel, born in the late 1940s, and who always had superb oratory skills for his age. He is widely credited with being instrumental in having the ADA established. Richard had been in Viet Nam and there had his hearing destroyed by a close-range blast. Trying to "find his own voice" in life, his own "music within", he eventually realized that it was to help the masses of disabled veterans and then all persons with disabilities.

Rebecca De Mornay is good as Richard's Mom, who suffered from numerous miscarriages and ended up in an institution. Hector Elizondo is good as Dr. Padrow, the professor that told Richard as a young man, go out and find out what you really believe in. Australian Melissa George is good as Richard's girlfriend Christine who found it difficult to get attention away from Richard's causes.

Good movie, well-paced, of a person who has been instrumental in a key chapter of US history, providing equal opportunities for the disabled.

Update Aug 2021: I watched it again on DVD almost 13 years after my first viewing and it was totally fresh. All the good things many reviewers say about the movie are accurate.