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"He Got Game" Movie Review

The game of his life

Spike Lee shoots hoops with young buck Ray Allen

BY TOM LYONS

Halfway through Hoop Dreams -- Steve James' brilliant 1994 documentary on two black youths trying to use basketball as a ticket out of the ghetto -- Spike Lee showed up at a Nike training camp and delivered a predictably cynical speech to the students.

"You've got to realize that nobody cares about you. You're a black, you're a young male. All you're supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason why you're here is so you can make their team win. And if the team wins these schools get a lot of money. This whole thing revolves around money."

In He Got Game, Lee attempts to translate that statement into an entire movie. Denzel Washington plays a convict (Jake Shuttlesworth) who is released from prison for a week so that he can convince his basketball star son, Jesus Shuttlesworth (Milwaukee Bucks' Ray Allen) to enrol in Big State, the warden's alma mater. But Jesus is being deluged with offers from other colleges and NBA recruiters, and he is also being pressured by his girlfriend, a local gangster and his poverty-stricken relatives, all of whom want a piece of the multimillion-dollar salary that lies ahead for him.

As in most of Lee's films, the numerous minor characters are sharply drawn, realistic and widely varied. Bill Nunn is funny as Allen's fat, bald uncle who nearly explodes with greed at the thought of all the money almost within his grasp. Jim Brown is suitably hard-assed as Washington's parole officer. Rosario Dawson is alluring and treacherous as Allen's girlfriend. And Milla Jovovich gives an affecting performance as a beaten and abused prostitute.

But it is Washington's understated performance as the convict father that lends the movie heart and keeps it from veering into the shallow optimism that has afflicted the majority of basketball films, from Fast Break to Sunset Park to Eddie to The Sixth Man to The Air Up There. Washington portrays a man who previously lost his temper easily, and accidentally killed his wife in a fit of rage. He is now so intent on keeping his cool that others mistake him for a coward, but his anger can always be sensed smoldering within.

The poverty of Washington's world is sharply contrasted with the wealth of the predominantly white university his son visits, where beautiful young women line up by the dozen to meet the star. It seems impossibly paradisical on the surface, but in a phone interview, Allen says that the underlying sense of mistrust and paranoia emphasized in the movie is essentially true.

"It's impossible to lead a regular life. You can't," he says. "Everyone knows you. But you have to watch out about letting people get close to you, so they can't hurt you."

The bewildering array of financial temptations and ludicrous rules depicted in the movie is also true to life, he adds.

"There are very clear lines. Like, you can't accept a pair of running shoes. That would be illegal. But a lot of guys get running shoes."

Though there are a lot of "grey areas," it is extremely easy to take the wrong turn and run afoul of the rules or start running with the wrong crowd.

"There's lots of guys that could have made it," says Allen. "We always talk about the ones that could have made it that wound up going the wrong way."

Allen gave Lee advice on what was or wasn't accurate, and the movie is probably second only to Hoop Dreams in terms of providing a realistic depiction of the recruiting process in college basketball. But it is a distant second, unfortunately, and its very similarity to the impressive documentary summons up unflattering comparisons.

Lee's attempt to overlay a religious meaning onto the story also seems rather forced. As the advertising blurbs put it, the movie is about the "the father, the son, and the holy game," and though Allen's character is actually named after the basketball player Earl Monroe (the "black Jesus"), the Christian themes of atonement and father-son reconciliation run throughout the story.

The notion of any high-salaried athlete as a genuine Christ figure is, of course, rather preposterous. But Washington's performance as the father, and the film's believable depiction of two opposing subcultures -- the ghetto and big league sports -- are strong enough to redeem the film and make it, if not one of Lee's best, then at least one of the better basketball movies.