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by CarlosC (movies profile)
Mar 31, 2008
26
of
32 people found this review helpful
A promising young basketball player (Ray Allen)'s torturous reconciliation with his jailed father (Denzel Washington) is complicated by the fact that HE GOT GAME -- at the top of the college basketball world's Most Wanted -- in the latest 'Spike Lee joint.' With so many people jockeying for his ear, Jesus Shuttlesworth (Allen) does not know who wants to help him play, and who just wants to play him. Even his father's intentions are made suspect when the governor grants his temporary release from prison to cajole his prodigious son into attending the governor's alma mater. Thus, the father has less-than-selfless motives in counseling his son, since his freedom hinges on making his son do not what is in his best interest, but what the governor wants.
Lee's picture frames the situation faced by so many African-American athletes, who are forced by society's sports superstar-making machinery to slip the bonds of a dysfunctional, poverty-ridden, underclass background for the stark, extravagant lifestyle of an instant, celebrity millionaire -- without much attention given to the human, emotional, and/or psychological challenges attendant on such an 'Air Jordan'-like leap. It's a situation that brings out the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, relatives and acquaintances who sense an opportunity to escape their desperate economic station, surround the rising star as if to ride with him in his flight to that miraculous slam-dunk that will lift him from economic desperation to a plane of existence where material satisfaction comes effortlessly. On the other hand, the agents and recruiters from the big time, big money world of high profile sports also flock to the rising star with equally, if not more, self-serving intentions. That moment -- the time during which the rising star is caught in the moral vertigo between two hypocrisies -- is the brilliant focus of Lee's film.
At times, though, HE GOT GAME gets lost in its ambitious writer-director's self-indulgent side-tracks, diffusing the central themes of the movie. Most notably, the film probes, but never deeply delves into, a subplot concerning the Washington character's attempt to intervene in the self-destructive life of a hooker (Milla Jovovich) whom he meets at the Coney Island motel where he stays during his temporary release. Equally distracting were Lee's exaggerated depictions of the excesses of the sporting life -- full of fast women, fast money, and fast cars -- which provide for lavish sequences on screen, but overstate the magnitude of the moral conflict of the film.
HE GOT GAME makes up for its excesses in its authenticity and heart. Many castmembers are products of what they represent on film. Rosario Dawson, who plays Allen's self-interested girlfriend, is from Coney Island -- the neighborhood where the main action is set -- and her mother attended Lincoln High School -- the school that young Jesus (Allen) attends. Allen himself is a real basketball star -- he was the number five NBA draft pick, having gone on to play pro-basketball for the Milwaukee Bucks. The film's many cameos -- by athletes, coaches, and sportscasters -- also add an authentic charm to the film. Finally, the love of basketball shines brightly through much of this film. Indeed, the very best scenes of HE GOT GAME take place on the basketball court and, although there may be one or two clichéic shots of basketballs gliding in slow motion across the screen, the basketball scenes here are the best I have seen since HOOP DREAMS. Aaron Copland's classical scoring adds a formal verve that evokes the pacing and the structure of regulated interplay.
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