He Got Game

Plot synopsis:
Jesus Shuttlesworth, the top basketball player in the United States, is being pursued by the top college basketball programs in the nation. His father, Jake, is a convicted felon serving time at Attica Correctional Facility for accidentally killing his wife, Martha, (Jesus' mother) twelve years earlier. Jake was pushing her and knocking her down hard on the ground, while arguing with a then-12-year-old Jesus (in flashbacks). The father is temporarily released by the governor, an influential alum of "Big State," one of the colleges Jesus is considering, so that he might persuade his son to sign with the governor's college. If successful, he'll get an early release from prison.
While seemingly a sound plan, it turns haywire due to the strained relationship between Jesus and his father. Upon his first moments outside of prison, Jake contacts his daughter, Mary Shuttlesworth (Zelda Harris), who is happy to see him. Mary invites her father to the apartment where she and Jesus now live, having moved out of their Uncle Bubba's place. When Jesus returns home from school, he is unhappy to see his father. Refusing to look him in the eye, he tells his sister to get rid of the "stranger" in their living room. Jesus later agrees to meet with his father at an alternative location away from Mary. Throughout the movie, Jake tries to persuade Jesus to attend "Big State" with seemingly no success. Eventually, he divulges the deal set up by the governor. However, Jesus appears unsympathetic to his father's situation.
Intertwined with the story of the Shuttlesworth family is the sub-plot of Dakota Barns (Milla Jovovich), a prostitute who stays in the room next to Jake in the run-down hotel, which the warden has booked for him. Dakota is being abused by her procurer and companion, Sweetness. Jake overhears the violence through the thin walls. Throughout the film, Jake is seen helping clean Dakota's wounds, and Jake gives Dakota some of his money to be used for his expenses during this week out of prison. He also develops a romantic relationship with her. Dakota is seen in one of the final scenes of the movie taking a Greyhound bus away from New York City.
Jesus is tempted with offers of cash and women on recruiting visits to big time basketball programs. He also considers declaring the NBA in order to play professionally sooner and immediately lift himself and his sister out of poverty. Ultimately, Jesus decides to sign to play for "Big State." However, the governor reneges on his promise to release Jake early from his sentence. Jake ultimately finds freedom by casting away his dreams and burdens to his son, Jesus, symbolized by the throwing of his old basketball over the prison wall and magically onto the Big State court where Jesus is practicing alone. Jesus clutches the ball, knowing it is a message of hope from his father.

Tags: melodrama, violence, satire, murder, flashback

Review:
Denzel Washington has one of his greatest charcaters in Jake Shuttlesworth in this compelling film by Spike Lee. Jake is a man serving a life sentence for the accidental murder of his wife during a domestic dispute.
As the film opens we learn that Jesus (effectively played by Ray Allen) has indeed become a high school basketball star and is being now aggressively pursued by University teams and commercial agents.
This is particularly unfortunate because the film has so much to say about the intersections of patriarchy/economic injustice/racism that I wish Spike Lee could have been a little more consistent with his development of the women characters (one notable exception is a brilliantly realized performance by Milla Javovich as a prostitute that rooms next to Jake).
Spike Lee's He Got Game is a beautifully shot and well-executed exploration of the role that the sport of basketball plays in the relationship between a father and his estranged son.
Furthermore, I really liked the definitive sense of Spike's style that was quite apparent throughout.Told through flashbacks that reveal the plot throughout the course of the movie, He Got Game is about Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) and his basketball-star son, Jesus (Ray Allen).
Denzel, as usual, excellently handles his role as the intense father, and is utterly believable in both his emotion-laden and his violent, angry scenes.Ray Allen's portrayal of Jesus is also an interesting and well-played usage of the strong dichotomy of masculinity in the sport of basketball.
Allen carefully and quietly allows the audience to see the conflicts between sensitivity and machoism that exist in his life, as a result of basketball.Probably one of the more interesting ways in which this film is set up is through the use of comparative shots that allow the similarities of Jake and Jesus's actions to show.
For instance when Jesus and his errant girlfriend LaLa (Rosario Dawson) are talking at the end of the film, both their faces vividly reflect a shade of jealous green from the amusement park lights.Overall this film is a very good spin on the basketball sports movie, yet with no huge stadiums or big games to win the championship, like what usually constitutes a basketball movie.
Directed by Spike Lee, this movie takes an in depth look at exactly how many variables are involved when being the MVP, and how a man can grow up and assess these circumstances.Ray Allen plays a character who's name is Jesus Shuttlesworth.
He really loves his son.Although Spike Lee did some amazing work with this movie especially with the inner city sequences, as well as the use of colors and poetry to his advantage for getting his ideas across to the audience, several scenes were unneeded which seemed overly explicit.
While Jesus hates his name, his father named him that through a basketball player that was how he put it, "the truth." This movie proves that in real life, you can benefit more by forgiving, and not forgetting.Overall I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a unique, intellectual film that will make you think about your present situation, as well as allowing you to know the difficulties that come with fame..
The film marches to the pace of the two leads, Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) and Jesus Shuttlesworth (real-life NBA player Ray Allen, which makes a startling debut), as they have continuous face-offs: Jesus won't accept that he has a father, and won't listen to him, being more interested in becoming an NBA star, as the managers, the limelights, the fame and the fortune keep calling him like the chant of the sirens.
I had to remind myself several times Denzel Washington was an actor and that he was playing a character named Jake Shuttlesworth--his performance is that good.
Overall this movie pretty much sucked, its kind of boring and contrary to what some people say, All-Star Ray Allen is a terrible actor and detracted a lot from the power of the movie, especially when he is paired with the awesome force of Denzel Washington.
Denzel Washington is once again amazingly convincing in his role, this time as a mostly ignorant father with some intriguing wisdom who was sent to prison for accidentally killing his own wife (that scene is ridiculous, unless his wife had a completely separate unnoticed brain tumor that coincidentally hemorrhaged just as Denzel pushed her a whole two feet into the stove.)  Other pluses in the movie are an amazing scene involving an agent who talks a great game and Laker Rick Fox, a much more natural actor than Allen, who makes a cameo in an amusing scene as a black college baller who likes his chocolate white.
Unfortunately the movie's handful of great scenes are buried by areas of ill-conceived situations and dialogue, blaring music that is poorly chosen and a vintage Spike-Lee-totally-wacked ending..
Enjoyed the great acting of Denzel Washington(Jake Shuttlesworth),"The Bone Collector",'99, who played a very complicated character role as a murderer who killed his wife who he really LOVED!
Still, I found myself thinking about the movie for hours afterwards, and even lying awake at night trying to come up with the ending that I would like to have seen.I wasn't sure what Aaron Copeland's music had to do with the urban black setting of the story, and I wished that there was a lot more of Public Enemy..
Ardent basketball fan Spike Lee wrote and directed this absorbing drama that explores the many challenges faced by talented young athletes, but more importantly the relationship between fathers and sons.
The storyline is a bit of a stretch, but made worthwhile by strong acting from Washington, compelling as usual, and NBA star Allen, surprisingly credible in his screen debut, but there are some issues: film goes on too long by including unnecessary subplots that detract from the central story, and some genuinely poignant moments are undermined by a booming score that tends to overshadow the performances.
Released for a week from prison in a shady deal in which he has to convince his son to sign with a particular university, the father of a basketball prodigy struggles to reconnect with his teenage children in this Spike Lee drama.
While basketball is a prominent theme and the film opens with majestic shots of various kids poetically playing the game, this is less a sports movie and more a study of estranged relationships with Denzel Washington and Ray Allen having close to equal screen time as father and son respectfully.
For a filmmaker that shows so much promise at times, Spike Lee has thrown up a real stinker with "He Got Game."  I will, however, begin by saying that the idea for the film and one of the performances given (Denzel Washington) are not bad at all.
It's not only that He Got Game's young main character is named Jesus- though that is a very obvious point writer/director Spike Lee puts out there just to nail it (no pun intended) across- but just the entire scope of the picture, individual scenes, that paint this as a kind of modern religious fable.
God isn't exactly present throughout the picture (surely the sex scenes and 'bad' language don't make it very holy for many audiences), but Lee's tale, however contrived to fit around the premise of a convict (Denzel Washington) being released for a week to try and lock-down his estranged son into a college the governor wants, strikes a chord almost in spite of its limitations.
In a strange way having the character named Jesus deflects the whole point: Jake, Jesus's father, named him for a *former* NBA player nicknamed Jesus, a sweet irony unto itself.What's most surprising for me is that within the set boundaries of the contrivances, both in the grand piece of the premise and in little occurrences like Jake being situated right next door to a beat up prostitute, Spike Lee has created a work of fiery passion and care and detail.
No accident then that basketball is both the main focus of the trials and tribulations of the characters of Jake and Jesus in the story AND Spike Lee's main joy aside from film-making.
It's how Lee works in the real personal issues, of the more intimate scenes (and not the ones you think are intimate, not sex scenes save for a brief one between Jovovich and Washington), that makes it work.So, amid the high-flying camera shots and subliminal editing and specific usage of colors and filters as metaphors and the slow-motion shots of the basketball flying through the air as if out in space and lost in time, with taking aside Lee's firm strengths here as a filmmaker, the acting shines out better than expected.
I fear Spike Lee "He Got Game" for several reasons and none of them include giving the audience a good product Another problem that this film has is the fact that it has more than enough graphic sexual content and language.
I fear Spike Lee "He Got Game" for several reasons and none of them include giving the audience a good product Another problem that this film has is the fact that it has more than enough graphic sexual content and language.
Spike Lee makes a movie for Disney.It was only a matter of time before Spike tried his hand at a basketball film and this is a worthwhile if flawed effort.
But without guidance since he essentially raised himself and his sister in the absence of his father and death of his mother, Jesus is vulnerable to all the temptation around him.Spike Lee forces points down your throat unnecessarily with explicit sex scenes which he does way too often in just about all of his films but though uncomfortable, it works in the aspect of this film.
A basketball movie fits right in with his love and this one starring Denzel Washington as a father let out of prison to convince his son to sign for the Governor's alma mater is not a bad movie.
Ray Allen is a good actor, and Denzel Washington is great, like always.
Recent sex/recruiting scandals at schools like Colorado and Rice serve as evidence of how visionary Spike Lee really was, though.Also, I like the emotional and moral complexity of Denzel Washington's Jake, who isn't the brightest or most comforting character he's ever played.
Denzel Washington has again proved he is one of the all time greatest living actors with his strong performance as Jake Shuttlesworth who makes friends in the film with a prostitute (beautifully played by Milla Jovovich).
But what also surprises me about this film is the fact that the main character Jesus Shuttlesworth played by Ray Allen is not even an actor!
If there was any stiffness in the film, it was in the acting skills of Denzel's son, but what do you want from someone that's really a basketball player and not a trained actor?
This movie is so much better than anything Spike Lee has ever done-with maybe one exception-although the story could have been tightened up and shortened (delete the Denzel/Hooker scenes) it still hits the mark with all pistons pumping full blast.
Spike Lee has a story to tell here-and he tells it with amazing commitment.Ray Allen puts on such a top notch performance in the pic that I am shocked I have never seen him again since, although being an NBA superstar might have something to do with that.Denzel, what can you say, he kicks ass.
A Strong Film From Spike Lee. A basketball player's father (Denzel Washington) must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter sentence.I have mixed feelings about Spike Lee's movies.
Now Jake must balance a release from prison against doing what is best for his Jay. Milla Jovavich and Rosario Dawson add to the fine cast.Many may shy away because it is a Spike Lee film, but the movie isn't a sermon about race relations.
My two favorite Spike Lee movies are "Clockers" and "He Got Game" and they share similarities: both are about guys trying to keep integrity amidst characters whose primary motives are to persuade him to leave the path."He Got Game" gets the edge because I love basketball and because I'm a sucker for well done father-son conflicts.
My two favorite Spike Lee movies are "Clockers" and "He Got Game" and they share similarities: both are about guys trying to keep integrity amidst characters whose primary motives are to persuade him to leave the path."He Got Game" gets the edge because I love basketball and because I'm a sucker for well done father-son conflicts.
(I can identify.) NBA perennial All-Star Ray Allen, while more than a little stiff at times, holds his own as a non-actor in a dramatic role.He Got Game is a flawed piece of work: parts drag, it's not without its hokiness, and the subplot with Denzel and Jojovovich didn't quite fit.
(I can identify.) NBA perennial All-Star Ray Allen, while more than a little stiff at times, holds his own as a non-actor in a dramatic role.He Got Game is a flawed piece of work: parts drag, it's not without its hokiness, and the subplot with Denzel and Jojovovich didn't quite fit.
The Spike Lee joint "He Got Game" is one of the director's most passionate films because it's about his own personal passion for the love of basketball, one of the richest and most mythic of sports.
While suffering from an overly long running time, a few under-developed characters (like Milla Jovovich's Dakota) and occasionally uneven storytelling, "He Got Game," like all of Lee's work, keeps you watching.It's mostly the father/son angle of the story that kept me watching.
I would also recommend this film to basketball fans because professional Basketball player Ray Allen who currently plays for the Seattle Supersonics is the 2nd main character "Jesus" in the movie.Fantastic film, please watch and post your review!!!.
Ray Allen gives a surprisingly good performance as High School Basketball star Jesus Shuttlesworth, and Lee gets the support from a myriad of NBA players including Travis Best, Rick Fox, Shaquille O Neal, Scottie Pippen, Reggie Miller, his airness Michael Jordan and a variety of leading basketball coaches from around the Nation.
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.
This movie seemed a bit questionable acting- wise, with Ray Allen having the supporting role and Rosaria Dawson playing Jesus's girlfriend, but honestly, it's pretty hard to tell (Milla Jovavich is even in the movie); of course, it all centers around Denzel's performance, and he does an excellent job.
The films primarily seemed to focus around the relationship between the father (Jake) and his son (Jesus), but it seemed as though Spike Lee added to many unnecessary smaller stories happening throughout the movie.
Jake Shuttlesworth (Washington) is put in prison for the murder of his wife.He has not had a civil conversation with his son, Jesus (Ray Allen) since then, but years later he is offered a shorter prison sentence if he can convince Jesus to play basketball for Big State University.
1998's "He Got Game" once again teams up Spike Lee with Denzel Washington.
I'd just like to present my views on some talking points regarding 'He Got Game' - The whole thing about the sex - people are completely misunderstanding Spike Lee as a filmmaker.
Well known for his style and method of story telling, Spike Lee directed another great movie, He Got Game, a creative and different way to tell a story.
His father, Denzel Washington, has been allowed a week from prison to convince his son, played by Ray Allen, to attend `Big State,' in order for his sentence to be reduced.
The acting is superb, Denzel Washington shines in his role as Jake Shuttlesworth, and Ray Allen is also pretty good as Jesus.
As well as the smart acting there is a powerful script and storyline, i wont say the story because its probably already been said in other reviews, but the characters are believable and original.The music is another good point for this film, the songs done by public enemy really add to the feel of the film and the title song "he got game" is a brilliant track.My favourite aspect of this film is Spike Lee's use of the camera, his slow pans around and smooth camera movements with no cuts are really good, this film contains some of the best shots i've seen and are really inspiring.Especially the scene when Jake is in the park hugging his wife's grave.My main criticism of this film is the ending, the film was believable and real all the way through but the ending was a big letdown, my other criticism is that it is a bit too long and can lose the audiences attention by being a bit boring.But overall this is a great film by one of Hollywood's best directors, and this film should have got more praise than it got, especially Denzel's performance..
Convicted felon Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) receives a one week release from prison to convince his son (Ray Allen)--America's top prep basketball player--to attend the governor's college alma mater.
In that sense, hiring Ray Allen to play Jesus Shuttlesworth, the movie's central figure ( even if Denzel Washington is unbelievable and tends to overshine in every scene he is in), because we know he can really play ball, but also that he has been through a lot of the stress his character is going through (that is choosing his future college, all the while being hyped "the greatest thing to happen to bball since the tennis shoe was invented").
Spike Lee writes a masterpiece and it is beautifully performed by Ray Allen and Denzel Washington..