He Got Game (1998)

Starring Denzel Washington, Ray Allen and Mila Jovovich

Written and Directed by Spike Lee

At his best, however, Lee brings to his films the artistry of a jazz musician. What I know about jazz could fit in on a greeting card. But I do understand that jazz is about the conflict between free improvisation and the constraints of time signature and melody; the best jazz musicians, I’ve been told, dwell in the narrow space between these two extremes.

Spike Lee explores this same territory. His films have plots, but they aren't constrained by plot. He introduces competing themes and wrestles them into harmony, supported by adventurous camera work and bold, hyper-realistic pallets. He mixes Public Enemy with Aaron Copland. His films make mockery of their timelines, and abut fantasy against grim realism. Sometimes his delicate structure collapses, and he ends up with twisted wreckage like Girl 6. But when it all works, a Spike Lee Joint is a wonder to behold, on par with the best performances of Miles Davis or John Coltrane.

He Got Game doesn’t approach the level of Do the Right Thing, which remains Lee’s masterpiece. But it comes close. Lee took his love affair with basketball, framed it in a classic father-son relationship drama, and turned it into a metaphor for the struggle against the corruption of the soul. The result was Lee’s best film of the 1990s, and one deserving of a fresh look.

He Got Game tells the story of Jesus Shuttlesworth (played by real-life NBA star Ray Allen), a Coney Island native and the top high school basketball prospect in the country. The story begins with Jesus already awash in the hype surrounding the most important decision of his young life: which of a veritable smorgasbord of college campuses dangling scholarships under his nose will he choose?

Everybody has an opinion on where Jesus should play. His high school coach casually hands him ten thousand dollars to help him make up his mind. His girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson) wants him to meet a friend of the family who turns out to be a sports agent with a mouth full of shark teeth. Visits to prospective college campuses include complimentary rolls in the hay with busty co-eds. All told, it's not a bad way to spend your senior year. But the pressure on Jesus to make the right decision is equivalent to several atmospheres.

Throughout the ruckus, Jesus maintains an even keel. He's an exceptionally grounded young man, having raised his younger sister Mary (Zelda Harris) in the absence of their parents. "I have to weigh my options" is his mantra. But then an irksome monkey wrench is thrown into his plans in the form of his father Jake (Denzel Washington), who has just been released on furlough for the express purpose of convincing Jesus to attend the Governor’s own alma mater. The problem is, Jake's serving twenty years on a manslaughter conviction for killing Jesus’s mother Martha (Lonette McKee). If Jesus plays for Big State, Jake gets an early release— but Jesus holds Jake in contempt. The story may be fictional, but it certainly helps put your own family problems into perspective.

This fractured father-son relationship forms the molten core of He Got Game. Denzel Washington gives arguably his most nuanced performance ever; he's mesmerizing as a con whose own promising life came to a crashing halt with one unfortunate choice. Jake knows he can never confront Jesus head on, so he comes at him from a series of oblique angles. He shows up on the practice court. He wins Mary's affection. He's polite to his son, but never obsequious, and absorbs the brunt of his anger without protest. But throughout the film flows a steady undercurrent of unease: does Jake really want to help his son, or is he only helping him because Jesus embodies his own salvation from prison?

Lee’s writing and direction achieve a fluid poetry that approaches the brilliance of his best work. Always dependent on his cinematographer, his style has changed dramatically since the glory days of his collaborations with Ernest Dickerson. Gone are Dickerson’s primary colors, warm lighting and carefully constructed tableaus; in their place, Malik Hassan Sayeed contributes a more natural style punctuated with his signature translucent lighting effects. But the end result is a Spike Lee joint all the way: a camera that functions as both participant and observer, a loose, dynamic script and a killer soundtrack— all for the price of a haircut.

Is the film flawless? Maybe not. A subplot involving Jake’s encounter with a troubled hooker (are there any other kind?) played by Mila Jovovich exists solely to provide Washington with more screen time. Their scenes together are both touching and charged with subtext— Washington publicly criticized Lee for pairing him with another white woman— but they distract from the film’s purpose. And those who go in expecting a lot of hoops action might walk away disappointed, because there really isn’t any.

But if you understand that this is a relationship drama set against the backdrop of college basketball, then you can accept the film on its own terms. Even Lee’s considerable indictment of the systemic greed and exploitation in college sports takes a back seat to the father-son tale. Everything Lee has to say in He Got Game can be summarized by its final shot— which I won’t spoil for you, but it's so fantastic and audacious that you’ll either feel a thrill in your heart, as I did, or you’ll reject it utterly. It’s a shot very few of Lee’s contemporaries would have the stomach for.

That Lee is capable of a He Got Game, a Do The Right Thing and a Malcolm X— three films that most filmmakers would give their agents’ right arms to have in their oeuvres— gives us hope that he may yet find his way back to greatness. After all, Scorsese wandered in the wilderness for most of the 90s before his current career renaissance as Oscar's favorite whipping boy. Genius, after all, is both a capricious mistress and a heartless bitch. She may have abandoned Lee temporarily. But I’ll bet he still has her phone number.

March 26, 2005
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