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![]() ![]() And after years of struggling to cash in artistically on his Academy Award notoriety, Gooding is back in the ballgame. But the film is so good that a little immodesty is not only acceptable but understandable. Of course, a guy who is entrusted with pulling off regular feats of wonder with small children had better possess a healthy ego, or he’s not going to get too far in the world of delicate pediatric neurosurgery, so the lack of authentic humility is perhaps inevitable for a doctor who’s received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A modest and unassuming portrait this is not, despite Gooding’s efforts to bring the character back down to Earth. If there is a criticism one can level at “Gifted Hands,” it’s the utter sainthood that envelops the surgeon as he goes about his daily heroics during the film’s final third. The music doesn’t crest to a climax so much as sustain what is shown to be a modern medical miracle, one of many Carson would cultivate. The dramatization of that first successful operation, in which both infants survived, is moving yet commendably understated. The film is framed by what proved to be Carson’s most challenging and celebrated case during the early years of his career in the mid-1980s: the separation of conjoined twins attached at the back of the head. We see that her own brain, however, turned on her, resulting in bouts of clinical depression she struggled to control. But his mother, Sonya (a terrific rendering from Kimberly Elise), is shown early on to have been a proud, devoted and tireless dispenser of tough love to her two boys, repeatedly drilling home the point that there was nothing they couldn’t achieve if they used their brains. Early on, we see Carson as a kid wracked with self-doubt and confusion in a household with a mother whose education stalled in third grade and a father who chose narcotics over the family. Kate McKinnon Kicks Off Debut as 'SNL' Host With Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph During MonologueĪffixed with the “Johnson & Johnson Spotlight” imprint a la the classic 2002 multiple Emmy winner “Door to Door” (and produced by members of the same team), “Hands” follows Carson’s inspirational tale from his childhood as a pudgy and angry kid struggling in Detroit’s inner-city projects through his rise to the top of the medical profession. (The surgical procedures are showcased in all of their bloody glory, but not so much as to cross the line into gratuitousness.) In lesser hands (if you’ll pardon the pun), this biopic could easily have drifted into maudlin sap, but Gooding keeps the character of Carson centered and human and the film honoring him wise and surprisingly graphic. It’s taken nearly two decades to get Carson’s inspiring story to the screen, but Gooding does him more than proud with a portrayal at once sensitively wrought and quietly moving. Gooding portrays real-life world-renowned brain surgeon Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and author of a best-selling 1990 autobiography. It boasts near-flawless direction from Thomas Carter, a vivid teleplay adaptation by John Pielmeier and uniformly magnificent performances, particularly from star Cuba Gooding Jr., who puts himself back onto the Hollywood map in a way he hasn’t since his Oscar-winning turn in 1996’s “Jerry Maguire.” ![]() TNT’s “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story” is one of those longform projects that has Emmy written all over it.
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