# He Got Game (1998)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

    HE GOT GAME
    (Touchstone)
    Starring:  Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich, Rosaria Dawson,
    Zelda Harris.
    Screenplay:  Spike Lee.
    Producers:  Spike Lee and Jon Kilik.
    Director:  Spike Lee.
    MPAA Rating:  R (profanity, nudity, sexual situations, violence)
    Running Time:  135 minutes.
    Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

As well-known as Spike Lee may be as a film-maker or spokesman for African-American causes, he may be equally well-known as a basketball fan. Most Americans first saw Lee's work in Nike commercials of the late 80s, featuring Michael Jordan and Lee himself as SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT character Mars Blackmon. Since then, Lee has become a much-lauded film director, but he has also become a vocal court-side fixture at New York Knicks games, moonlighting as director and narrator of Nike ads supporting women's basketball. Make no mistake, Spike loves his hoops.

I can't help but feel that love clouded Lee's judgment as he put together HE GOT GAME. The story deals with the strained relationship between convicted felon Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) and his teenage son Jesus (with the Biblical, not Spanish, pronunciation, and played by Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen). As Jake finds himself out of prison after nearly six years, he tries to re-connect with his son and daughter (Zelda Harris), only to find Jake deeply embittered and unable to forgive. Jesus also happens to be the #1 high school basketball prospect in the nation, which is the reason his father is on the streets again. The governor wants Jesus to attend his alma mater Big State, and offers Jake the prospect of early parole if he can persuade his son to sign a letter of intent. Unfortunately, Jake is competing with plenty of other people -- Jake's uncle (Bill Nunn), his girlfriend (Rosaria Dawson), agents, college coaches and various hangers-on -- who all hope Jesus will show them the money if they show it to him first.

The corrupt race to recruit top high school athletes isn't exactly fresh subject matter, having already appeared in the 1994 film BLUE CHIPS. Lee puts a humorous spin on some of the ridiculous excesses of the process, but his real chance at originality would have been putting us inside the head of the young men, most from impoverished backgrounds, facing these dizzying attempts to influence. That's somwhere Lee and first-time actor Ray Allen never take us, allowing us to see the insanity without allowing us to understand how Jesus really feels about it. Allen looks comfortable enough on screen, but his character is too passive, so fundamentally decent he never seems fazed by anything. Lee has a lot of stuff he wants to show us; Jesus's role is more or less to absorb it all.

As it turns out, Lee has so much to show that he keeps getting sidetracked from the one undeniable strength of HE GOT GAME, the relationship between Jake and Jesus. Washington is typically impressive, most notably in a pair of dynamic schoolyard sequences: relentlessly driving young Jesus to improve his game in a flashback, then competing with Jesus in a one-on-one game. Both sequences tear into the heart of Jake's sense of his own lost opportunities, burning with the intense competition between father and son and unspoken desires to return to simpler times.

If Lee had centered on that relationship, HE GOT GAME might have been a truly memorable film. Yet Lee keeps turning his attention elsewhere -- a strange sub-plot involving Jake's relationship with a young prostitute (Milla Jovovich), pointless banter between Jake and his two parole officers. Mostly, however, he's distracted by basketball, blasting heroic Aaron Copland compositions at every slow-motion image of schoolyard ball. There's enough thematic material here for two films; Lee decides to make them both simultaneously. The resulting film feels scattershot, heavy on interesting images and ideas but light on cohesiveness. Somewhere in there is an engrossing family drama, often relegated to the nosebleed seats while Lee keeps pulling us courtside to watch his inner city story with a basketball backdrop turn into a basketball story.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 hoop dreams:  5.

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