DIRECTOR
Brian
Robbins
SCREENWRITER
John
Gatins
based
on the book
Hardball: A Season in the Projects by
Daniel Coyle
PRODUCERS
Tina Nides
Brian Robbins
Michael Tollin
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Tom Richmond
MUSIC
Mark Isham
EDITOR
Ned Bastille
CAST
Keanu Reeves (Conor O'Neill)
Diane Lane (Elizabeth Wilkes)
John Hawkes (Ticky Tobin)
Bryan C. Hearne (Andre Ray Peetes)
Julian Griffith (Jefferson Albert Tibbs)
Michael B. Jordan (Jamal)
A. Delon Ellis Jr. (Miles Pennfield II)
Kristopher Lofton (Clarence)
Michael Perkins (Kofi Evans)
Brian M. Reed ('Ray Ray' Bennet)
DeWayne Warren ('G-Baby' Evans)
Carol Hall (Pearla Evans)
D.B. Sweeney (Matt Hyland)
Mike McGlone (Jimmy Fleming)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 106m
U.S. release: September 14, 2001
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
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In Hardball, Keanu Reeves
plays a white guy who comes in to save the day for a bunch of
black kids by coaching their disorganized little-league baseball
team in the Chicago projects. In an attempt to make the premise
less mawkish and offensive than it just sounded (blacks can't
get it together until the white man helps), Keanu has also been
made a ne'er-do-well gambler who owes serious cash and only takes
the coaching assignment because of the promise of $500 a week.
So this isn't just an inspirational story of disadvantaged youth
triumphant -- it's a story of redemption.
I'll let Hollywood get away
with it just this once. I was in the mood for something easy
and familiar, something predictable, if you know what
I mean; Hardball isn't generally my kind of movie, but
on its own terms it's relatively painless and harmless. I don't
know if I'd recommend it to anyone except those who feel the
need to sink into a lukewarm bath of clichés for two hours,
to enter a world that, while formulaic and hackneyed, makes some
sort of sense. This is less a hardball than a softball, without
any curves or surprises. That's okay just now.*
Brian Robbins, who used to
be an actor (the intellectual hood Eric on Head of the Class)
before graduating to directing (Varsity Blues, Ready
to Rumble), seems to have a sharp eye for premises that play
better on video. Here, working from a by-the-numbers script by
John Gatins, Robbins hits all the plot-point bases. Keanu resents
having to coach the team until he gets to know them. The kids
do nothing but trash-talk each other (the trash-talk has been
noticeably cleaned up to win a PG-13 rating -- at one point you
hear the only-in-PG-13-movies-or-network-TV epithet "motherfreaker")
until they learn to play as a team. Keanu flirts with the kids'
English teacher (Diane Lane), who wearily tolerates this ruffian
until she comes to realize that he's the star of the movie and
therefore worthy of her affection.
Diane Lane is usually of interest
-- it's a relief to see her relaxed here after her overdone Glah-stah
accent in The
Perfect Storm -- and Keanu Reeves works nimbly with her;
he works well with everyone here, including the kids, but also
John Hawkes as Keanu's gambler crony. Reeves, as an actor, is
on and off. When allowed to withdraw into a cocoon of surfer-dude
cool, he comes across as wasted space on the screen, but give
him a modicum of friction and he actually can bestir himself
to connect with his costars and with us. He sells a grandstanding
moment in which he invites the president of the ball league to
explain to his team why one player has been disallowed and another
can no longer pitch without the headphones that have been keeping
his pitching laser-sharp; he even sells a grief-choked speech
after tragedy strikes the team.
Did we need the tragedy? It
takes the air out of the remainder of the movie, and the speech
is intercut with scenes that are meant to be bittersweet but
come off as emotional bullying. There's no question that the
team will go on to win the championship, but this is the first
uplifting sports movie I can recall wherein the triumph happens
offscreen -- we're fobbed off with snapshots of the players
smiling with their trophies. Hardball isn't primarily
about the sport; its pulse is the shabby white man learning to
be nice and reach out to black kids, but it doesn't really show
why the kids respond to him when their playing sucked
under his predecessor. Is it just because he's Keanu Reeves and
the kids know he's cool from The
Matrix? The movie offers little other explanation.
* This review was written a few days
after the WTC attacks.
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