He Got Game

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2005)

This movie was excellent, even though I am not a basketball fan. But the music and the story of a promising high school basketball player, who is being recruited by the top colleges for scholarships, and the bitter reunion with his prisoner father who accidentally killed his wife, and the boy's mother. The entire movie is a sort of reunion, and a soul searching for both the father and son. D. Washington and Ray Allen both give exceptional performances. The last scene of the movie has symbolism, in that while Washington is playing basketball in Attica, his son is playing in Big State university (Part of a deal by the governor to recruit the boy into his alma mater in exchange for lessening the father's remaining sentence), their actions are mirrored, and when Jake sends his ball skyward, it drops right in the lap of Jesus, where he takes the ball and finally smiles and accepts his father. I also see it as the ball being the North Star which led Jesus to Bethlehem, and guided his road to wisdom from then on. See it by all means.