Remove the implicit political dimension of an all-black cast, and Denzel Washington's directing debut is just Prince of Tides or Good Will Hunting done over.

Newcomer Derek Luke plays the troubled sailor who revisits his abused childhood under the eye of Washington's navy shrink; their sessions a springboard for all manner of cathartic flashbacks.

The whole thing is soothingly predictable and peppered with cliches. Annoying to admit, therefore, that Antwone Fisher's gratuitous tear-jerking finale slipped in under my guard. I left the cinema moist-eyed and mad as a wasp.