Knights of the South Bronx

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Knights of the South Bronx

Directed by	Allen Hughes
Produced by	Dianne Nabatoff
Written by	Jamal Joseph Dianne Houston
Starring	Ted Danson Malcolm David Kelley Yves Michel-Beneche Keke Palmer Yucini Diaz Antonio Ortiz distributor =A&E
Release date(s)	December 6, 2005
Running time	90 mins.
Language	English
Budget	N/A
IMDb profile

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.

[edit] 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.