Using the story of a father and son’s reconciliation, Lee explores the essence of modern sports, particularly the enormous monetary and materialistic pressures put on burgeoning young athletes. The capitalistic world is a large, scary place, and athletes have become little more than expensive commodities. Audiences pay to see them, so they are worth a certain price, and those who control the money will do anything they can to get them on the court.

The athlete in question is Jesus Shuttlesworth (played by real-life NBA star Ray Allen). He is the nation’s top high school recruiting prospect, and when the movie opens, he is one week away from the deadline to sign a letter of intent. Everyone is asking what college he is planning to attend (that is, for which college will he play basketball), but Jesus isn’t sure. Unlike many high school seniors, he is mature and patient, mostly because he has spent the last couple of years fending for himself and raising his younger sister, Mary (Zelda Davis), in the housing projects along Coney Island in Brooklyn.

Enter Jesus’s father, Jake (Denzel Washington). Jake has been in a maximum security prison for the last six years, and Jesus denies that he even has a father any more (there are reasons behind this which involve Jake’s crime, but I won’t reveal them because Lee goes through great pains to slowly develop this plot thread). Jake is released from prison for one week on the condition that he convince his son to attend Big State University, the governor’s alma mater. The deal is, if he gets Jesus to sign at Big State, Jake’s sentence will be drastically reduced.

But Jake is hardly the only one who wants to influence Jesus. In fact, it seems like everyone wants a piece of him. These include Jesus’s uncle, who wants to be compensated for the years he raised Jesus in Jake’s absence; Jesus’s girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson), who is dealing with a big-time sports agent to convince Jake to jump right into the pros; and his high school coach, who doesn’t mind slipping him ten grand in cash from an unnamed source if it might speed up his decision-making process. Everybody around him has some kind of vested interest in what Jesus does.

On its surface level, He Got Game works as an indictment of the current basketball system. From the greasy sports agent who is incapable of mentioning an object without also affixing a price to it, to the fictional Tech University that sets Jesus up with big parties and big-breasted prostitutes, Lee’s film shines a harsh spotlight on what goes on behind the scenes in college and pro basketball. Of course, this is really nothing new—it’s a long-established fact that the game is twisted and materialistic, and our general consolation with this corruption is testament to our modern cynicism.

The dramatic heart of He Got Game is in the relationship between Jesus and his father. The loss of fatherhood within the urban African-American community is a pressing issue, and Lee’s film creates a touching and plausible relationship between an estranged father and his understandably embittered son. Neither Jesus nor Jake is a perfect person, and the way they eventually come together is sometimes painful, but always convincing. Their relationship is also burgeoned by a surprisingly religious tone. There is a great deal of talk about the nature of God, prayer, and redemption, which is what the film seems to really be about. Jake finds redemption in his son’s eyes, Jesus redeems himself by making the right choices in a hostile environment, and Lee even includes an arguably unnecessary subplot about a prostitute named Dakota (Milla Jovovich) who Jake helps to redeem, as well.

As Jesus, Ray Allen gives a better performance than one would expect from a professional athlete (although he looks and sounds much older than a high school senior). Denzel Washington, who had already established himself as one of the best actors of his generation, turns in a quiet, but moving performance as Jake, a man who knows he has made mistakes, but is willing to do what he can to repair them. Jake is a fascinating character, although the screenplay does him some injustice near the end of the film by having him lash out violently and start acting like a street hood for no particular reason.

Nevertheless, it is at the simple dramatic level that He Got Game succeeds best, not at the socially challenging level of indicting the basketball system. After all, this is a film that features cameos from just about every big-name moneymaker in pro basketball in the late 1990s, including Dick Vitale, Charles Barkley, and Michael Jordan, not to mention several major collegiate coaches. Even the cinematography by Malik Hassan Sayeed (Clockers, Girl 6) at times resembles a Nike commercial. And, of course, it is difficult to ignore just how involved Spike Lee has been with the professional basketball system he is attacking—from his courtside seats at Knicks games, to his involvement with the advertising arm of the Nike conglomerate. Although these connections probably allowed him a certain insight into the subject most directors wouldn’t have, it also risks making his efforts look somewhat disingenuous.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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