Losing Isaiah is Halle Berry's best movie. I wish she had gotten the Oscar for this film because She gives a breakthrough performance here as a black drug addict who abandons her baby and struggles to get him back from the white mother (Jessica Lange) who adopted him. Other Noteworthy performances here are Samuel L. Jackson and Cuba Gooding Jr. The film is great, not playing race as an issue, but showing us people as human beings letting the events play and showing us the outcome. I highly recommend this film.

Seeing this movie for the second time, twice on television, the story is about a an African-American baby abandoned by his mother, Khaila Richars, who was strung out on crack, and his foster mother, Margaret Lewin, a social worker who raises him. The first three years of the boy's life, he is nurtured and cared for by the Lewin family while his mother goes through rehab and getting herself a job and a place to stay. She learns of the child she abandons and wants to claim custody of him.
I felt that Khaila needed more time be an adult rather than trying to claim her son back. For one thing, she abandoned a baby and got hooked on drugs. And another, she needs to know how to be a more responsible adult. Although she got rid of her married boyfriend and kicked her habit, she couldn't offer much for Isaiah who was already accustomed to his surroundings. The Lewins, who are white, raised Isaiah, despite the cultural differences. But they have to relate to a society that is colorblind. They just can't up and assume that everything is like a fairy tale. Margaret's husband cheated on her and she didn't even know it until he admitted it in court.
Unfortunately children like Isaiah are put away and await for families that reflect their background and oftentimes, they never get adopted fully. It's even more sad when people have children that they aren't prepared to care for. Government intervention has made it worse. It is argued by some people that they need to bring back group homes and orphanages and put more funding into them. But of course, that too was under fire.
I felt that Isaiah better off living with a family that was stable and nurturing and that Khaila needed to grow up and get herself together. Perhaps even form a certain bond with the family that took in Isaiah.

I've seen this movie on Lifetime Movie Network last year, in my own home, during the Spring. All I remember is little bits and peices of it, but - at the end ... I was hystarical in TEARS! I don't want to spoil you, but - she (the birth mother) did give back her son to the one that cared for her, because the son was CRYING and not eating a THING for weeks. This is why I was CRYING because it was SUCH a happy ending! Gotta watch it... :) You'll cry, too, if you're as sensitive as I am. :)

12/04/03 The movie ends with one line on the screen Isaiah 11:6 "and a little child shall lead them"...Supense is there from the moment that the child's biological mother*(played by actress Halle Berry*)) puts him in a cardboard box behind the "beastly room she has herself & he living in"; to him being rescued from the inside of a Muncipal Trash Truck " in the nick of time;to the ER representing itself as the life saving force of hospitals once more, in rescusitating him; with a woman* (of another race and her family adopting him)played by actress Jessica Lange*) saving him from an early life of "foster homes" ,his biological mother raising from her demons,pits and dens of self destruction",the courts ruling in favor of the biological mother (so he can be raised in the culture which is the reality that he must be groomed to realize)to an ending of the adoptee's mother and the biological mother going beyond "self" to be a team in helping him reach the age of reason and beyond as a sensible human.

For those of you that think Halle is just a pretty face...hopefully her Oscar winning performance in "Monster's Ball" showed you that she wasn't...but if you still have doubts this is a movie you should see. Halle is well deserving of an Oscar in this film as well, she plays a crack addicted homeless woman who loses it all and dumps her baby in the trash just so she can get a hit...when she comes out of her drug stooper she then realizes her mistake, but it's too late. The baby was adopted by a white family and she believes her baby to have died. The movie takes off from there, the white family raises and cares for the child. After Halle's character struggles but reforms herself she finds out that the child is still alive. Then the battle for who is rightfully the parent of the child begins. Some of the highlights here...Samuel L. Jackson's role as Halle's Lawyer and the scene in which the 2 "mothers" meet in the bathroom for the first time...that is a very powerful scene. The movie is a very powerful and moving piece of cinema. Excellent film.