Willie

Parents need to know that Willie is a documentary about Willie O'Ree, the first Black major-league ice hockey player in North America. Overall the tone of the movie is positive and carries a multitude of positive messages. O'Ree is resolute and hardworking, showing himself to be a positive role model long after his retirement as a professional hockey player. O'Ree's friends and colleagues are from a variety of backgrounds and work together to campaign for his inclusion in the Hockey Hall of Fame. O'Ree and others also work with young and disadvantaged people to increase access to the sport, both as part of his work as an ambassador for NHL and through his involvement in other, local, and national programs. Violence is infrequent but does feature occasionally, both in footage of professional hockey games and anecdotally, when O'Ree and other players tell stories of altercations and injuries that take place on the ice. The most graphic of these is a story about how O'Ree was deliberately targeted by another player because of the color of his skin and had his nose broken. There is practically no swearing, although there is once instance of "s--t" when someone drops something by accident. Mainly the language is race-related, with frequent references to the "N" word when discussing racism.