Every once in a great while a film turns up with so much emotional impact, integrity, dramatic richness and cinematic skill that it can inspire new optimism about the movie business, about America, about humanity itself. “Radio” represents precisely that sort of refreshing, altogether unexpected gift, a triumph at every level for all concerned.

For once, the promotional campaign doesn’t begin to do the justice to a movie. The tag line used in advertisements (“His Courage Made Them Champions”) suggests a manipulative melodrama about a mentally handicapped adult who somehow inspires an unstoppable high school football team. In reality, “Radio” offers satisfactions far more subtle – and substantive. Inspiration came from a touching 1996 Sports Illustrated article about a developmentally challenged lost soul who, over the course of 40 years, became the most beloved citizen of Anderson, S.C. Cuba Gooding, Jr. earns certain Oscar consideration for his career-topping performance as “Radio” – who wins his nickname through his love of music and his fascination with discarded or broken radios. Wandering through town with his shopping cart and his wide-eyed, shy and open-mouthed smile, he feels drawn to the high school football field to watch the players practice until the most arrogant members of the team play a prank by tying him up and locking him in a practice shed.

The straight arrow coach (Ed Harris in an utterly convincing, undeniably heartfelt performance) feels appropriately outraged by this act of wanton cruelty. He not only enforces carefully considered punishment (and life-changing object lessons) on the wrongdoers, but begins to reach out to the terrified victim. He offers him food, drink and an invitation to come onto the field to watch the team going through its drills. Eventually, the coach drives him out to the shack in the country where Radio lives with his widowed mother (S. Epatha Merkerson) who explains that her boy is “the same as everybody else, just a little slower than most.” In fact, the young man bears the mind (and the warm-hearted innocence) of a small child, and can speak only at an incoherent toddler level.

The coach looks beyond these shortcomings and adopts Radio as surrogate son, drawing him steadily closer to the football program and inspiring resentment and suspicion from the victory-obsessed small town boosters. In the process, Harris also pays more attention to his own long-suffering, football widow wife (Debra Winger) and cheerleader daughter (the fresh-faced, endearing Sarah Drew in a memorable debut). As the coach observes, the staff and students of the school (including compassionate principal Alfre Woodard) end up learning more from Radio than he ever learns from them. Those lessons emphasize connection and dependence and love and community with the realization that emerging as a winner doesn’t always involve scoring the most points. One of the film’s glories involves its obvious, irresistible affection for small town, high school football and all its timeless rituals, without succumbing to the predictable plot line about a miraculous run for the state championship. Fans of “Hoosiers” and “Remember the Titans” will love this film, that features some of the same vivid camera work, autumnal lighting, expert editing and colorful characterizations, but with a different (and deeper) sense of uplift and exhilaration at its conclusion.