Knights of the South Bronx

Infobox_Film
name =Knights of the South Bronx
imdb_id =0471768

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director =Allen Hughes
producer =Dianne Nabatoff
writer =Jamal Joseph
Dianne Houston
starring =Ted Danson
Malcolm David Kelley
Yves Michel-Beneche
Keke Palmer
Yucini Diaz
Antonio Ortiz

distributor =A&E
released =December 6, 2005
runtime =90 mins.
language =English
budget =N/A

"Knights of the South Bronx" is a 2005 TV film about a teacher who helps students at a tough inner-city school to succeed by teaching them to play chess.

Plot summary

The movie is based on a true story. In it, whistle-blowing and a mid-life crisis combine to remove Richard Mason (played by Ted Danson) from his old life. He becomes a substitute teacher and is assigned to a fourth-grade class in a South Bronx school. In the class are students with parents who are drug addicts or in jail or just scrambling to pay the bills. Few of them see a purpose in school other than meeting society's requirements, and he struggles, mostly in vain, to reach them.

Then a student whose father is in jail sees Mason in the park playing a simultaneous exhibition, and beating fourteen opponents at once. He asks to learn the game. One thing leads to another, and soon the entire class is interested in the game. Mason convinces them that on the chessboard it doesn't matter how much money you have or what clothes you're wearing or where you come from, and that it's only the moves you make, then and there. The ending is perhaps somewhat predictable but still satisfying, as the class forms a team and goes off to compete in ever-larger tournaments.

Cast

*Ted Danson - Mr. Richard Mason
*Malcolm David Kelley - Jimmy Washington
*Yves Michel-Beneche - MD Duprais
*Keke Palmer - Kenya Russell
*Yucini Diaz - Renee
*Antonio Ortiz - Dawson
*Nicholas Carpenter - Dawson's Opponent

External links