Hardball (2001) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"What do you do around here for fun?"
"Play baseball with you."
Starring Keanu Reeves, John Hawkes, Trevor Morgan, Bryan Hearne, Julian Griffith, Michael Jordan, Graham Beckel, Allan Ellis Jr., Christopher Lofton, Michael Perkins, Brian Reed, DeWayne Harris. Directed by Brian Robbins. Rated PG-13.
Hardball isn't what the advertising made it look like, but it's too close. It could have been an extraordinary story in a familiar framework; instead, it's a conventional story with a few extraordinary moments. Indeed, there are times, usually a few seconds long, when the film is so genuine and heart-rending that you wonder if the story cliches weren't dictated to director Brian Robbins in the interest of making something populist. Oh, and in serious movies, Keanu Reeves seems to consistently be a problem.
Conor O'Neill (Reeves) enters a church late at night. The priest tells him that it's time to lock up, and asks "Do you need faith? Forgiveness?" The response? "I need the Bulls to make the spread." And how: O'Neill is thousands of dollars in debt to bookies and sports bar owners around Chicago. His last resort is a wealthy stockbroker friend of his, who's at the end of his rope. Instead of "lending" O'Neill another twelve thousand dollars, he agrees to pay five hundred a week to coach an inner city kids' baseball team.
One of Hardball's virtues is humanizing the "street kids," most of whom eventually become gang members, or worse. They're streetsmart and trash-talking, but they're kids, with the same fears and anxieties as any other 10-year-old. And as O'Neill predictably rehabilitates himself through coaching this disorganized-but-talented group of baseball players, the most vivid personalities that emerge are those same children.
There are moments when Hardball comes utterly alive. I got bleary-eyed during the scene at the major-league stadium, when the kids wave at Sammy Sosa and... he waves back. Another scene has O'Neill visiting the Projects home of Andre, one of his players. When O'Neill asks what the kids do around here for fun, Andre responds: "Play baseball with you."
For all the success the movie has with those little moments, it strikes out with the main storyline, which takes precisely the course you would expect. There's not a single surprise along the way, from the kids' gradual acceptance of O'Neill and vice-versa, to his miraculous recovery, to the "sudden" death of one of the main characters to the Big Game at the end (though to the movie's credit, the game itself isn't shown, but the penultimate game is). There's even the naughty sidekick who tries to pull the protagonist back into his nightmare.
Keanu Reeves is problematic. He has had mild success as a serious actor -- I liked him in The Devil's Advocate, and The Watcher -- but here he's too jittery, as if someone told him to exaggerate his every motion to the point of his performance looking for all the world like a pantomime. I didn't buy Diane Lane as teacher/love interest either, but maybe that's because the script doesn't give her a chance to become a character.
I can't give Hardball a high rating, but I suppose I'm fond of it. It has some real poignancy, and real people, somewhere under that nightmare of a plot. In light of recent events, and the daunting prospect of "rebuilding," here's a movie about a character who, however predictably, rebuilds himself. If only it had been, say, Ed Norton, instead of poor, old Keanu. But I hear The Matrix Reloaded has started filming.
Grade: C+
Up Next: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
©2001 Eugene Novikov
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29501 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 250451 X-RT-TitleID: 1109876 X-RT-SourceID: 610 X-RT-AuthorID: 1577 X-RT-RatingText: C+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews