Rez Ball (2024)

Rez-Ball-(2024)
Rez Ball (2024)

The world knows how Toronto International Film Festival’s “Unstoppable”, “The Fire Inside” and Rez Ball, directed by Sidney Freland, will go down one word: beautifully. I guess we can conclude that the “Inspired by True Events Inspirational Sports movie” is back. Nataanii Jackson, a former Johnson School of Business student and now a talented NBA player, left school to co-write this film that was made in partnership with Reservation Dogs Co-Creator Sterlin Harjo and is based on the nonfiction book Canyon Dreams about the success of Chuska Warriors basketball team from New Mexico who were a Navajo Reservation basketball team.

3 events have interesting beats the film is likely to follow. The first is the idea the audience already knows about their teammates’ introductions and the issues they face in life. Start off with one of the stars Nataanii Jackson (played by Kusem Goodwind) whose professional career couldn’t go ahead because a mother and a sister died after a car crash last year. And then there is his best friend, played by Kauchani Bratt, incredibly charming as Jimmy Holiday, who worked at a fast food outlet before heading to classes to support his mother, Gloria (Julia Jones). And then, there’s the other star of this movie who is known for playing Coach Hobbs (Jessica Matten) in this movie, she is a WNBA elite player and is coming back home as yet no success in this phase of her career.

Despite winning the first game of the season against a rival team with Nataanii leading in the field, the absence of his loved ones is still unnerving.

He completely closes in on himself, so tightly that it becomes difficult to get to him. But on the court, he seems to float in the air as baskets keep coming from him effortlessly. Basketball is as natural to him as breathing. There is however a cue of sadness, a sort of darkness that is apparently different from his teammates when he is outside the court. And when he fails to appear for their next match soon after, the news that floods the dressing room is devastating. Reservations boast some of the highest levels of suicide in the nation and clearly this young sportsman has chosen to simply end his struggle with the grief he lives with.

Next, we transition to Jimmy’s perspective as the focus of attention, despite his prior reservations as one of the minor characters. This is a jarring change that permits Freeland to bring the audience into the mind of the character. This is further augmented when Coach Hobbs, who has the tough task of leading this team through the loss and throughout the season, makes Jimmy the captain of the squad. She is very creative in all her exercises aimed at building the team. During one of the weekends, she takes them to her grandmother’s farm which has numerous sheep, and makes the children round up the newborn ones that have wandered away from the barn. This is when Jimmy starts appreciating what Navajo customs are about, such as the language.

After enduring a few losses that sure took some out of the players, the team nevertheless calls for the embracing of such practices with pride, adopting their mother tongue as the language for calling plays to disorient the opposing teams. It gives the film one of its biggest laughs the mention of Nicolas Cage’s film “Windtalkers”. Throughout the script, however, Harjo and Freeland effectively managed to balance the more gravitas scenes with cheeky humor, and self-mocking humor too, at times, courtesy of one of the two color commentators, who never seem to run out of frybread gags. As a result, the film feels like it has been watched before but with some new twists to it quite interesting.

Freeland performs excellently in the shooting of the basketball sequences where camera movement pans the ball with traditional slow motion while the whole team puts in the effort to shoot the ball in coordination. These aspects of the film are complemented perfectly with character moments that provide the audience with an depth understanding of the principal actors and their life’s misery, happiness, and everything in between. Due to the nature of the large cast within the film, not every character gets treated fairly in terms of development. For starters, it is not every day that a star like Amber Midthunder would take on the role of a supporting girlfriend character but all of her brief screen time has her making every single second matter.

It can be deduced that even the prominent storylines were not given the attention that was required in terms of how they are intertwined with one another. For a great number of scenes, the film completely neglects the emotional growth of Coach Hobbs which ultimately leads to the disintegration of the emotional impact of her last scenes. The film seems to add Krista Reaye as an assistant to Jimmy who teaches the team some basic words in Navajo not from the numerous other credits she gets throughout the movie. They are, however, well offset by the parallel journeys between Jimmy and that of his mother.

Embracing the culture and the role of the leader, he takes the baton while she is trying to get over with the job and join to deal with her alcoholism and stop being so pessimistic.

In spite of its awkward structure, “Rez Ball” isn’t so much uplifting as it is inspirational, without devolving into preachiness. There’s an endearing tenderness and wit that is specific to culture but is also something that is general and has mass appeal. From beginning to end, it is also just plain fun to watch. I am glad to report that the revival of the feel-good sports movie trend is off to an excellent start.

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