Director: Spike Lee
Stars: Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich, Rosario Dawson, Zelda Harris, Hill Harper
Jesus Shuttlesworth (Allen) is the number one high school basketball prospect and is coveted by many schools and the NBA teams, and the destination of his future is subject to much attention. His father, Jake (Washington) is in prison for manslaughter but he gets a weeks release in order to try and convince his son to go to college at the prison governor’s alma mater.
What follows is a story about…well, it’s about a lot of things. You have the father/son tension, commentary on the commercialization of sports, warnings about the temptations that lurk when young athletes are thrust into the limelight and a grim portrayal of human nature, which, as shown in He Got Game, is mostly selfish. This makes for a film with a lot of substance but it never truly has a focus so it feels somewhat disjointed and haphazard. It doesn’t seem to have a clear vision and it’s like the director had a lot of stories he wanted to tell so he just put them in the melting pot and waited to see what happened.
That’s not to see it’s a bad film though, I actually liked it quite a bit. Allen is good as Jesus and manages to hold the film together, and shows the pressure that he’s under as everyone is constantly asking him where he’s going to go. There were some nice stylistic choices in this regard, as there were a number of quick shots with people commenting on Jesus with their heads close to the camera, and it gave the audience a sense of what Jesus must feel as everyone was getting in his face and trying to tell him what to do. Denzel Washington is good as always, and his charisma ensure that the character is likeable despite his dark past. Rosario Dawson was pretty good as Jesus’ girlfriend, and there were some revelations that made her character more complex as the film went on.
There’s some good character drama and it’s a very engaging movie but I don’t think the resolution is very satisfying. Despite Jesus’ insistence that he’s going to make a decision I didn’t feel that I knew what he really wanted to do. Practically everyone in his life was trying to manipulate him and in the end it seemed that at least one person succeeded, but we’re not shown whether that will lead to a good or a bad outcome. I feel that He Got Game could have used a coda, as is shown normally in biopics. Just a few paragraphs at the end so the audience can see what happened to Jesus and Jake and whether it all worked out for them.
I think it’s a pretty good movie and it has a lot to say about a number of subjects. I’m not sure that I’d watch it again due to the lack of a firm resolution but it provides engaging drama and it’s certainly worth watching.