AllMovie

Filmmaker Greg Whiteley presents two sides of the current state of high-school debating in this documentary. Matt Andrews and Sam Iola are two students from Highland Park High in Texas who are stars of the school's debating team. Highly rated in nationwide competition, Andrews and Iola are gifted practitioners of a debate style known as "the Flow" -- rather than focusing on a few salient points and supporting them with strong oratory, "the Flow" depends on students amassing a huge amount of factual material and delivering it as quickly as possible, with the sheer bulk of data telling the tale. However, Andrews and Iola also come from a wealthy and well-funded school where they're given the time and resources to collect the information necessary to make "the Flow" work. Meanwhile, Louis Blackwell and Richard Funches represent Long Beach, California's Jordan High, where, with their coach Dave Wiltz, they've turned their back on "the Flow," a system they believe rewards time, money, and rote memorization over genuine talent in presenting an argument. Coming from a primarily African-American high school in a low-income neighborhood, Blackwell and Funches show great linguistic skill and a knack for logical argument, but can their gifts for the fundamentals of debate pay off in a competitive atmosphere that's been dominated by "the Flow" in recent decades? Resolved was screened as part of the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival.