Rez Ball (2024)
Directed by: Sydney Freeland
Premise: A Native American high school basketball team loses their star player to suicide. The players must overcome their grief and redefine the way they work as a team.
What Works: The best sports movies use athletics to dramatize human experiences and the deeper desires of their characters. Rez Ball does that quite well. This is an underdog story of a Navajo high school basketball squad who must compete against wealthier and better resourced teams and overcome the death of their teammate. The filmmakers do a great job establishing this group of young people. Each player is physically and emotionally unique and they are also credible teenagers. The story reminds the viewer that these players are young people going through all the challenges of adolescence. Several of the players get unique subplots in which they fall in love for the first time and cope with troubled parents. The coach, played by Jessica Matten, is also well characterized. Her roots are in this Navajo reservation and she deals with her own personal matters. She’s tough but the story and Matten allow the coach moments of humanity and vulnerability. The basic premise of Rez Ball is familiar from other sports pictures but the nuanced characters and specific cultural angle make the material fresh. Rez Ball is a portrait of a community; the high school basketball team is a hub of local interest. The cultural detail creates an impression of specificity and authenticity. Rez Ball also impresses in its filmmaking. The basketball action is well staged. The filmmakers convey the evolution of the team’s playing style through the action and the basketball plays are shot and edited in a way that gives the games a coherent narrative.
What Doesn’t: Rez Ball claims to be based on true events. That’s not really the case. Rez Ball is inspired by the nonfiction book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation by Michael Powell but the characters and the story are fictional fabrications. Claiming to be based on true events is a bit dishonest but it’s no more egregious than a lot of other movies that make equivalent declarations. The best sports films are about characters working through other issues. The plot of Rez Bell is set off by the death of a teammate but their grief isn’t so much resolved as it is forgotten. The emotional motivation gets lost by the film’s climax.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Rez Ball is a better than average sports picture. The movie delivers kinetic basketball action and a familiar underdog story but the movie is distinguished by its likable and complicated characters and vivid sense of place.
Episode: #1027 (December 15, 2024)