Finding Forrester
The movie opens with 16-year-old Jamal sleeping in his bedroom, which is stacked with books, and then jumping up to go meet his friends on the schoolyard basketball court. While playing basketball, he and his friends watch a well-dressed man drive up in his BMW and, apparently concerned with the poor neighborhood, carefully lock his car before delivering a box of goods to someone in the apartment building across the street from the schoolyard. The friends all know of a recluse, William Forrester, who lives on the top floor of the building across from the schoolyard and regularly notice him watching them from his window, although they never see his face.
The next day at school, one of the boys challenges Jamal to sneak into the apartment. That evening, Jamal and his friends attend a game at Yankee Stadium, where his elder brother is a parking attendant. After the game, the boys call Jamal out on the dare and he sneaks into Forrester's apartment.
After climbing the firescape and crawling into the apartment thorugh an open window, to his surprise, Jamal finds stacks upon stacks of books and literary papers throughout, drawing his interest beyond the feat his friends have dared upon him. He unlocks the multiple bolts and opens the front door a crack and then picks up a letter opener and puts it in his backpack, which he sets down in order to explore the apartment further. Suddenly, Jamal is surprised by Forrester, and he runs out of the apartment, leaving his backpack behind.
Jamal and his friends end up back on the basketball court the day after Jamal's failed burglary attempt and notice Forrester watching them; Jamal sees that the mystery man has hung Jamal's backpack up in the window. Soon after the man in the BMW shows up again, and Jamal introduces himself, telling the man he will not do anything to the car. Jamal suggests that the BMW is just a car like any other, but the man tells Jamal that a BMW is not just any car, implying that being poor, Jamal would not know much about BMW. Jamal then goes on to give a mini-lecture about the history of the BMW, putting the man in his place he adds "but I guess you knew that seeing as you lease one and all". As Jamal and the man part, Jamal's backpack falls from the sky and lands next to him. He picks it up and takes it back home where he looks through to make sure all of his notebooks and materials are still there. To his surprise, he finds his writing marked up.
Jamal goes to the apartment and knocks on the door, apologizing for the previous intrusion and asking Forrester if he would look at more of his work. Forrester responds that he would like to first see 5,000 words on why Jamal should "stay the fuck out of his home", which Jamal promptly completes in his bedroom.
As part of the backstory, Jamal has just completed state required testing where it is revealed that he is an intellectually gifted student. His school counselor sets up a meeting with Jamal's mother and a recruiter from a highly selective private school, Mailer Callow, which covets Jamal for his athletic ability, as much as for his intellectual capability. The recruiter offers Jamal a scholarship, suggesting that his play on the basketball court is welcome, but not absolutely necessary.
In class, Jamal also has obstacles to hurdle, the most prominent being the expectations or lack of, by his arrogant literature teacher, Professor Crawford. Jamal watches Crawford completely destroy an obviously struggling student and defends the student by matching Crawford's hobby of starting famous quotes from authors for the students to finish. Jamal obviously know's his stuff as Crawford feels threatened, probably because nobody has ever been able to do so before, and tells Jamal to leave his class. Jamal later comes to learn that Crawford and Forrester are former colleagues and in fact, both attended Mailer Callow as students. Crawford has built a reputation as an authority on Forrester's works and had at one time attempted to publish a biography of him, which Forrester blocked. Crawford also attempted to publish his own book, but as Forrester indicates, it was rejected.
Jamal convinces Forrester to go out of the apartment and attend a game at Madison Square Garden. It begins well, but later, Forrester is separated from Jamal when the crowd leaves the stadium and Jamal finds Forrester having a severe panic attack. After leaving the game, Jamal takes William to see Yankee Stadium as a surprise. He and William go out on the field to the pitcher's mound, where William tells Jamal about his family, specifically his brother's alcoholism that leads to his death. He also explains how the subsequent deaths of his parents soon after affected him and led to him becoming a recluse.
As part of Jamal's tutelage, Forrester gives him some of his own private essays to rewrite(giving him the title and first paragraph), with the admonishment that Jamal is never to show any of this work to anyone. But when a prestigious writing contest requires some of Jamal's best work, he falls back on a particular piece of Forrester's that he re-wrote and submits it as his own, not realizing it was one of Forrester's few published works. Crawford immediately finds the parallels with Forrester's piece published in 1960 and brings Jamal up on plagiarism charges, to which Jamal has to defend himself against without admitting his friendship with Forrester.
Forrester is angry at Jamal for breaking his promise, while Jamal is angry at Forrester for closing himself off to the world and not having the courage to re-enter it. Forrester indicates there is no reason for him to come to Jamal's assistance and admit their relationship to Crawford, which Jamal sees as another act of cowardice, although he maintains the secrecy of their friendship.
On the basketball court, Jamal also faces another truth: that his scholarship and presence at the school was, in fact, based more on the school boards wish to win basketball championships, knowledge that is made clear to him by Dr. Pearce at a formal party and later one of Jamal's games. Pearce suggests to Jamal that as long as he can win the basketball championship, the plagiarism charge will go away. When Jamal comes to realize his intellectual gifts have less to do with remaining at Mailer Callow than his ability to lead the team to a championship, he comes to a crossroad where he wants to decide between following his literary heart or the path his physical skills can take him. At the championship game, Jamal may have purposely missed 2 critical free throws in spite of Crawford's hostility towards him, or he could have just missed them.
When the awards ceremony for the literary contest are held, where the contestants read their own work, Jamal is discouraged from attending, but attends anyway, where Crawford's presence prevents Jamal from reading his essay. During the literary contest, Forrester pays a surprise visit to the school to address the professor's accusations in person with subtlety: he reads what everyone assumes was his own unpublished writing, then reveals it as Jamal's work, admitting his friendship with Jamal and thereby proving his innocence. The charges are dropped over Crawford's objections, and Jamal is reinstated.
Afterwards, Forrester thanks Jamal and tells him of his desire to return to his homeland of Scotland.
The movie then cuts to Jamal's senior year of high school, when he is a successful student and has received many enrollment offers from prestigious universities. One day, Forrester's solicitor schedules a meeting with Jamal, and reveals that Forrester has died of cancer; Jamal learns that Forrester was terminally ill while they knew each other. In accordance with Forrester's will, Jamal is given a package and a letter, in which Forrester thanks Jamal for helping him rekindle his desire to live. The package contains the manuscript for Forrester's second, and last novel, called Sunset, for which Jamal is to write the foreword.
