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"Film at its best has the power to engage us emotionally and spiritually. It can make us think and feel, and it can resonate deeply within our souls, reminding us what it means to be human. When a film is truly great, instead of bringing about little more than Pavlovian responses to song cues and other shameless manipulations, it ignites the humanity that has been lulled into dormancy by cynicism and sensory overload and the nagging notion of our own insignificance. And that is what makes the documentary Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life not only a great film, but the best film of 2007. Not only does DGW make you think and feel, it serves as a reminder that we, as human beings, have a capacity for greatness that can't be bound by the limitations of the physical world.

"Logan Smalley's documentary is a collective labor of love, put together by a dedicated group of people committed to changing the world. At the center of Smalley's film is 15-year-old Darius Weems, a gregarious young man from Athens, Ga., confined to a wheelchair by Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Having already lost his older brother Mario to DMD, Darius and his friends want to educate the world, in hopes that increased awareness will lead to a cure for the terminal disease. DMD, the most common of all forms of muscular dystrophies, is a genetic disease, prevalent among men, that affects approximately 1 in 3,500 boys. Because the gene for DMD is carried on the X chromosome, girls won't manifest symptoms of the disease unless both X chromosomes are infected. Therefore, cases of girls with DMD are extremely rare. Symptoms generally begin before age 5, characterized by muscle weakness that can make children appear clumsy or uncoordinated. To the untrained eye, a child with early-stage DMD does not look much different from any other klutzy kid who gets picked last for sports teams. But as the disease begins to take over the body, muscles continue to weaken and eventually waste, confining most, like Weems, to wheelchairs before the age of 12....

"The ultimate destination of Weems and his posse is Los Angeles, where they hope to persuade MTV's Pimp My Ride to customize the young man's electric wheelchair. More than just a silly dream of a teenage boy and his friends, the real goal is to make the millions of viewers of Pimp My Ride aware of the No. 1 genetic killer of young people in the world...."

--David Walker on www.dvdtalk.com

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