PG-13 | 1h 51m | Action, High School Sports | Sept. 27, 2024
Especially if it’s a story about a scrappy little team of underdogs—both on the bleak reservation and on the basketball court—who are challenged to move past a team tragedy, learn teamwork, give the arrogant rivals something to cry about, and slam dunk the big championship. It helps that the basketball details are supervised by none other than Mr. Basketball himself—LeBron James—producing.
‘Rez Ball’
Navajo filmmaker Sydney Freeland, inspired by Michael Powell’s book “Canyon Dreams,” kicks “Rez Ball” off with a flashback to two high school friends, Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind) and Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt, Benjamin Bratt’s nephew), playing hoops in recent bygone years. By high school, both have put in their time on the court and have become formidable players—especially Nataanii, who’s got the height to go with his skills.
Nataanii, however, is a recent survivor of major tragedy; he missed the last season because a drunk driver killed both his mother and sister. Despite his world completely falling apart, Nataanii has made a comeback to play the new season. Having a smoke with his buddy Jimmy at one of their old childhood hangout spots, he talks of wanting to get away from it all.
The coach of the Warriors is Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten). She grew up locally, went on to play for the WNBA, and, per the successful hero’s journey, has brought her gold back to the village compound, to coach the boys team.
Dark Times and Team-building
The problems begin in the season’s second game. The Warriors go up against the Santa Fe Catholic Coyotes and get steamrollered. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Nataanii doesn’t show up for the game and nobody knows where he is. Post-game, in the locker room, the cops show up, and coach Heather has to deliver the horrendous news that Nataanii has indeed managed to get away from the reservation. By taking his own life.Heather makes Jimmy captain; the responsibility can help take his mind off his grief. She also brings in an assistant coach who’d been washing dishes, but years before had coached her team to state.
Eventually, they coalesce into a workable unit, but in a moment of hubris, too much partying is indulged in, and things fall apart at a critical moment in the season. The team nevertheless manages to make the state playoffs, which take place at the University of New Mexico 15,000-seat arena known as “The Pit,” in Albuquerque. The sportscasters muse publicly about which Chuska Warriors team will show up—the hardscrabble winners or the reckless losers.
Overall
“Rez Ball,” in attempting to adhere to the typical underdog sports drama formula, while also dramatizing reservation life, shortchanges, somewhat, both of these primary intentions. Life on the rez is ghetto, and ghetto is almost always tragic, and so adding an inspirational sports movie to that deeply serious mix always runs the risk of coming off a bit disingenuous. Using Nataaniis’s death as a rallying cry for the teams’ attempt to go to state feels a bit insignificant and inconsequential compared to the suicide that drives the motive.Naturally, the game scenes are the best ones—with LeBron James producing, how could they not be? It’s pretty much a given that there will be some exciting on-court moments.
My favorite part of the movie was that it showed how the mere presence of a male elder can stabilize drifting teen boys. One thing that becomes more and more clear-cut about American society is that hip-hop culture has inundated America’s youth groups—from the Kentucky Appalachian hollows, to parts of predominantly Jewish Long Island, New York high schools, to the Navajo Rez—with a never-ending display of tats, cornrows, sideways-worn ball caps, and rap.
And so it’s heartwarming to see that when the elder has the boys circle up and smudges them with an eagle feather and burning sage, they all know how to cleanse themselves in the sacred smoke. It’s a thing of beauty, to see spiritual heritages and traditions still, by hook or by crook, remaining alive.
