He Got Game

Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington (Virtuosity)) is in jail but has a deal proposed to him where if he convinces his son Jesus (Ray Allen (NBA shit)), the number one high school basketball player in the country, to attend and play for Big State then he’ll get his sentence reduced significantly.  Sounds like a great concept to me.

But what makes this one worth watching are all of the superfluous strange things.  For starters it has an Aaron Copland and Public Enemy soundtrack.  I don’t think anyone has set basketball playing (in Brooklyn no less) to Copland’s “Hoedown” before.  I don’t think it really works very well but goddamn is it an original idea and I respect that.  There’s also a pimp and his prostitute (Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Resident Evils)) making references to Gone with the Wind and Vertigo.  Not to say that all pimps and prostitutes aren’t cultured people that wouldn’t or shouldn’t know those movies but it just seemed so weird and out of place because this is a serious flick and those references are meant to be taken as such.  We also have a scene where Denzel mentions to his nephew that he must have grown a couple of inches since he last saw him.  The nephew can’t believe his ears and looks happier than a kid on Christmas morning.  I don’t understand this overblown reaction.  Denzel’s kids are named Jesus and Mary and there are headlines in the papers like “Jesus Saves” after he wins a game.  And there’s plenty more.

Everyone’s acting is pretty bad in this except Denzel.  He’s fucking great as a father who pushes his son to the edge and then over it.  Prison makes him a better man like Nicholas Cage in Con Air.  He seems to be the only person in the movie that can see straight and is the least corrupted by his son’s success.

He Got Game makes being a young blue chip player look like hell.  There are all these people that want a piece of you and it’s difficult to not get sucked into your own fame and ego.  It’s an interesting issue and it’s something that not very many films talk about.  I want to say that this portrayal is over the top (don’t know a helluva lot about the topic) but in this case it helps to get the point across.

But I don’t think I should go on and on about this Spike Lee joint.  It’s best if you just see it for yourself.