Two Cents Film Club continues its trek through a deeply rewarding director-actor collab
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to cinapse.twocents@gmail.com.
The Pick: He Got Game (1998)
In honor of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s new, fifth collaboration Highest 2 Lowest, remaking Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, we’re stepping back to revisit – and for some of us, visit for the first time – their prior collaborations together.
The 90s were a golden age for NBA Basketball, and the sport’s popularity resulted in a fair few basketball-themed movies, often featuring NBA and NCAA players.
Obviously one would expect nothing less than for the New York Knicks’ most famous fan, Spike Lee, to be a part of this movement. Before going on to direct He Got Game, Spike had even offered to help with the script for Space Jam for his friend, director Joe Pytka, though that fell through when Waner Bros. declined his involvement.
Spike has been involved in a fair few sports documentaries, but it’s He Got Game that is his ode to basketball – warts and all.
Remember in White Lighting when the US government offers Burt Reynolds a conditional release from prison in order to spy on Ned Beatty for them? Well, this is “Black Lightning”. He Got Game is a film where Ned Beatty offers Denzel Washington a conditional release from prison in order to influence a #1 high school basketball prospect’s college selection, for the pleasure of the governor. That prospect is Jesus Shuttlesworth (young NBA star Ray Allen), the son of Denzel’s Jake Shuttlesworth. Jesus is fast approaching his deadline to select and enroll in a University, and the governor wants him for his alma mater.
With a few days out of prison to make the play, Jake has an opportunity not only to commute his own sentence, but to try to mend his relationships with his teenage son on the cusp of manhood, and his young daughter.
The Team
Ed Travis
I had no idea what He Got Game was really about.
Sure, it was a Spike Lee joint about basketball, and another Spike X Denzel collab, which was all I needed to know to press play on the thing. But I was pleasantly surprised by this highly unique tale. From the opening montage depicting the global, race-spanning, gender-bridging power and popularity of the sport of basketball set to Americana music from Aaron Copeland himself, I knew Spike had some things to say about his beloved sport (a sport I personally care very little about, but it’s great to know you’re in good hands).
But when Ned Beatty’s prison warden pulls Denzel (Jake Shuttlesworth) to his office and makes it plain that the governor is going to give him some leniency if he can convince his own son, Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen, who was an actual NBA player), the top high school draft pick in the US, to attend a particular university to play basketball, my jaw somewhat hit the floor. What follows is an exploration of the courting of an elite college athlete in which every single character in Jesus’ life has an angle and is trying to influence him in a way that will benefit them.
I will say that Allen acquits himself in terms of his performance, but overall as a non-actor he’s definitely overshadowed by legends like Denzel (his dad), Rosario Dawson (his girlfriend Lala), Bill Nunn (his uncle), and more. He Got Game is ultimately a character piece built out entirely around one young man’s choice, “the most important choice he’ll ever make”, of where he’s going to play ball. As writer/director, Spike also explores elements of corruption and pressure and the business and chicanery that swirls around the sport he loves so much.
Jesus is an exceptional young man with an exceptional talent. But how can he know who to trust when everyone has an angle? Jake is in prison for accidentally killing Jesus’ mother. Right in front of him. When he was just a boy. Jesus has been raising his little sister Mary (Zelda Harris) ever since. So the tension between Jake and Jesus is palpable. But their connection goes deep, and Jake’s genuine, flawed love for his son does come through, even if Jake also has an angle.
He Got Game may not be the best Spike Lee joint, but his genius and his passion come through in this nuanced exploration of the good, the bad, and the ugly of basketball, and a genuine father-son connection among a couple of broken-but-trying Black men.
Austin Vashaw
I love basketball movies and this era of the 90s was rife with them, thanks to the sport’s popularity during the Bulls Dynasty and its epic hardwood battles for supremacy. While most of these films approached the sport for its athletic action or playoff drama, or mined it for comedy, Spike used it as a backdrop to tell an unusual family story about a deeply broken relationship, with two children raising themselves as the result of their father imprisoned for accidentally killing their mother.
Denzel has a difficult and complex character to portray in Jake Shuttlesworth, as a prisoner on a temporary release to try to influence his son’s college choice as a favor to the governor in exchange for a lighter sentence. While it’s an opportunity he can’t afford to miss, so is taking the only chance he’ll ever have to mend the relationship he destroyed. Jake was not only Jesus’ father but also his basketball mentor, doggedly training him – sometimes too brutally – to be the toughest player on the court. But the bond they shared has given away to years of resentment that Jesus feels for his father’s mistakes and abandonment.
Denzel’s partner in this narrative dance is the NBA’s Ray Allen, at that time a brand new player for the Milwaukee Bucks. While not a professional actor (this was his only major role), he acquits himself well as a young man getting pressure from all sides as everyone, including his father who conveniently shows up right as he approaches stardom, wants to know the same thing: where will he go to college?
Spike cooks, and as usual, he serves up a film that’s not only entertaining, but deeply thoughtful and reflective, taking the ugly with the beautiful.
I would recommend making this a double feature with my all-time favorite sports drama which pretty much lives in the same world: William Friedkin’s powerful collegiate ethics tale Blue Chips, in which Nick Nolte plays an NCAA head coach who faces incredible pressure to perform illegal incentivization to buy up the best athletes to play for his team. After all, all the other universities are doing it. It’s the flipside story of Jesus’ pressures from his opportunistic uncle to accept bribes, but from a coach’s perspective.
SPIKE X DENZEL
In honor of their latest collaboration, Highest 2 Lowest, the Cinapse team is celebrating one of American Cinema’s greatest collaborative teams: Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. Join us by contacting our team or emailing cinapse.twocents@gmail.com, and be sure to catch Highest 2 Lowest in theaters August 22nd from A24 and Apple!
8/25: Inside Man (Available on VOD)
And we’re out.
