He Got Game 

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Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, John Turturro, Ned Beatty

I try to love Spike Lee, I really do. Ever since we all rented "She's Gotta Have It" in high school, I've followed his career intensely, hoping he would break out of whatever weird funk he's been in for the last eight years and give us the good stuff. "Do the Right Thing" was an example of what he can be in his greatest moments, "Girl 6" is a glimpse of his worst. Mostly, we have to settle for a kind of genius' mediocrity, like in the flawed stories of "Malcolm X" and "Mo' Better Blues." Now we have one more to add to the litany, his latest: "He Got Game."

Word has it that Spike needed a hit with Denzel Washington, and he wanted to do a basketball movie. Since Denzel is too old to be a bona fide player (in the streetball sense), he concocted a story where a young high school hoops star named Jesus Shuttlesworth (NBA guard Ray Allen) must be convinced to go to a certain college in order to get early parole for his father Jake (Washington). Jesus is feeling the pressure on all sides; from his snake-like girlfriend, from his uncle, from the local Coney Island homeys and from every coach in America. Even Dean Smith has a two-second cameo, making the recruitment process one of the few unadulterated pleasures to watch here. Ray Allen himself is obviously no actor (made plain by his scenes with the amazing Denzel), but becomes an amicable soul by the second half. Jesus is shuttled back and forth from school to school, from his father to his friends, while even the lowliest of his acquaintances want a piece of the pie. Los Angeles Laker Rick Fox takes a devilish turn as a player at a college full of temptations and hookers (which shows you how great an actor Fox can be, coming from squeaky-clean Carolina). There are all kinds of story lines here, and in true Spike Lee fashion, they are a bit of a mess. He seems to think that his characters show depth by behaving irrationally in one scene per movie; in reality, all it does is make it seem like Spike had no vision.

And that is the biggest crime of all, because nobody has a better vision, at least for the camera, than Mr. Lee. His opening sequence of basketball as a universal language is positively breathtaking. Street kids dunk on each other in Brooklyn while a young boy throws a basketball into a suspended milk crate on a farm. Urban whites practice foul shots while Michael Jordan soars in sculpture. The filmmaker has talent. And the game sequences? Brilliantly spliced together with music from seminal American composer Aaron Copland, they are worth the price of admission alone. And again, we're forced to wonder "what if?" in the frustrating world of Spike Lee's flawed genius.

—Ian Williams

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