Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

"Several years ago, a movie was made about these hands," Ben Carson said, palms turned to the camera, at the end of a Republican debate in February 2016. He meant 'Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story', the TV film TNT premiered on 7 February 2009 with Cuba Gooding Jr. as the neurosurgeon. It was directed by Thomas Carter, of 'Coach Carter' fame, from a script by John Pielmeier based on the autobiography Carson published in 1990 with Cecil Murphey.

It opens in 1987. Carson is head of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and he's asked to separate two German twins joined at the back of the head. Earlier attempts in cases like theirs had ended with at least one of the babies dying, and while he spends months preparing for the operation, the film goes back to Detroit in 1961.

There Ben is a ten year old with bad grades whose classmates think he's stupid. His mother, Sonya (Kimberly Elise), is bringing him and his brother Curtis up on her own. She left school in third grade and hides the fact that she can't read, but she limits them to two TV shows a week and makes them read books and write reports on them. With a new pair of glasses and a lot of hard work Ben goes from the bottom of his class to the top, though he still has to learn to control his temper.

Aunjanue Ellis plays Candy, the girl Carson meets at Yale, and Gus Hoffman and Jaishon Fisher play Ben as a teenager and as a boy. It was shot in Detroit, with a Wayne State University neurosurgeon advising on the operating room scenes, and it belongs to the same run of Johnson & Johnson sponsored films as 'Door to Door'. Gooding was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award and Carter for a Directors Guild award. Elise drew much of the critics' praise, though more than one felt it painted Carson as a saint.

• Biography
• Drama