Always Outnumbered

In Los Angeles, the hot-tempered collector of cans Socrates "Socco" Fortlow (Laurence Fishburne) is an ex-con that has served a long sentence for killing a man and a woman. Now he is trying to build a new life and find a job. However he is discriminated against his age, color and background. His only friend is Right Burke (Bill Cobbs), who is dying of cancer. He also helps a young woman that is having problems with her husband. When Socco meets the boy Darryl (Daniel Williams), he finds that Darryl lives with a foster family that does not take care of him. Further, he has just witnessed the murder of another boy by a small-time criminal. Socco helps the boy to grow-up while helps Burke and tries to find work at a supermarket.

"Always Outnumbered" is a powerful drama with the story of a man that is trying to build a new life after committing murder and staying imprisoned for a long period. He has no education, but has become wise with the lessons of life, and is a good man that helps friends and acquaintances. The story shows also his difficulty to find a job due to his age, color and background. However the plot is hopeful in the end. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Garantia de Vida" ("Warranty of Life")

A beautiful piece of cinema - don't be put off by the fact that it's listed as a television production - it has more heart and soul and craftsmanship than any fifty contemporary Hollywood films. Fishburne's portrayal of this very intricate character is one of the great male screen performances of his generation. I'll confess that I had more than a few tears rolling down my cheeks at the end of the film. Once again ignoring exceptional small-scale work, the Academy Awards and movie media in general proved themselves to be so much debilitating, meaningless, commercial rubbish by ignoring it. Resist the dumbing down of America and support films like this and, for example, "The Station Agent."

This can be a tough video to find, but when I finally did it turned out to be well worth the effort. This is a great film, it rates right up with "Citizen X" as one of the best made for HBO movies. Laurence Fishburne is terrific as Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con living in inner L.A. and attempting to carve a new life for himself while just barely getting by. Fishburne gives the character real grit, anger, and pride, but most of all he shows us a man who is committed to living life honorably after making some very serious mistakes. You can feel the frustration of a man who is trying to live right in a world that is seldom fair, but he won't give in to the temptation to make an easy buck or to compromise his principles. The film is presented as a series of intertwining stories about the people in Fortlow's life, and the other actors in the film are superb - there is never a moment that doesn't feel real. The stories all have meaning - love, prejudice, empathy, sorrow, friendship, honor and death. It's not often that a film says this much without seeming to, and it's not often you see a film this moving. If your video store doesn't have it, be like Socrates and just keep coming back and protesting loudly until they do.

Ground breaking moral film running counter to the exploitative mainstream. Deserves, and will probably receive, serious study by film students for many years to come.

I can only imagine this would have been the kind of rare, special once-in-a-life-time project all who participated must feel pretty good about.

This is what I considered one on the more underrated films in our time.It doesn't happen very often where you actually take some type of a lesson from a film. This one was able to do just that.



This wasn't a movie about an angry black man who felt life owed him anything, it was just the opposite. It was about a man DOING something with his life after spending time in prison. Rather than being a drain on society, he worked for his money, and damn hard I must say. It didn't matter what he did to earn it, just as long as it was legal. He also was able to help a friend fill a void, another end his pain and help a child who needed guidance.



I know this movie was only fiction, but I wish our society were filled with people like Socrates.