Rez Ball: Shoots and scores!

Rez Ball (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, teen drug/alcohol use, occasional profanity and crude references

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.13.24

This continues to be a terrific year for inspirational sports sagas, and director Sydney Freeland’s heartfelt drama is another winner.

 

Coaches Heather and Benny (Jessica Matten and Ernest Tsosie III, far right) watch the
game action, along with team members, from left, Ruckus (Damian Henry Castellane),
Warlance (Jojo Jackson) and Levi (Jaren K. Robledo).

Although suggested by Michael Powell’s 2019 nonfiction book, Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, Freeland and co-writer Sterlin Harjo developed their own characters and storyline. Freeland comes by the topic honestly; her high school basketball days at Navajo Prep spawned a lifelong love of the game.

No surprise, then: The tone, characters and Navajo culture are rigorously authentic (and just as captivating as the basketball action).

 

The present-day setting is the fictitious reservation community of Chuska, named for the mountain range that runs along the Arizona/New Mexico border. The story begins as longtime best friends Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind) and Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt) razz each other during some lively one-on-one. Their bond is palpable, but Nataanii’s bearing is withdrawn, somehow fragile.

 

He still grieves for his mother and sister, recently killed by a drunk driver.

 

Nataanii has returned to school, and everybody in town is thrilled that he’ll once again be the celebrated champion of the Warriors basketball team. Nobody is happier than Coach Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten), who relies on him to rally everybody’s spirits. She understands that his leadership eases any awkwardness the boys might have, being coached by (ahem) a woman.

 

Alas, matters quickly take a tragic — but not unexpected — turn.

 

Lacking her star player, and with Jimmy and his teammates emotionally shattered, their first season game — against the Santa Fe Catholic Coyotes, their hated rivals — is an embarrassing disaster.

 

Heather hopes to groom Jimmy into the leadership role, but he has a lot on his emotional plate. Aside from having lost his best friend, his mother Gloria (Julia Jones) — a single parent — is a longtime alcoholic who relies on him for financial support; that means additional shifts at the burger joint where he works.

 

Gloria is sullen, often angry, and chronically depressed; Jones handles this role with grim authenticity. When Jimmy asks why she never attends the games, to watch him play, her reply is a gut-punch: “I don’t want to see you fail.”

Wind River: A compelling, smoothly flowing drama

Wind River (2017) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for strong violence, rape, profanity and disturbing images
By Derrick Bang

The narrative in writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s superbly mounted Wind River is driven by equal parts grief, loyalty and justice ... the latter not necessarily to be confused with the rules of law.

Having back-tracked a fleeing young woman's progress through the harsh landscape of
the snow-covered mountains near Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) and FBI agent Jane Banner
(Elizabeth Olsen) make an unexpected discovery.

In three short years, actor-turned-filmmaker Sheridan has established an impressive reputation for thoughtful, riveting dramas that place characters in situations — and environments — where the American dream is little more than cruel irony.

His scripting debut, with 2015’s Sicario, becomes more relevant by the day: its grim, uncompromising depiction of drug violence along the U.S./Mexican border an unhappy reminder of the degree to which American demand is responsible for Mexican supply. Last year’s Hell or High Water perceptively explored the callously unjust circumstances that drive disillusioned men to criminal activity, when they’re on the wrong side of the wealth/poverty divide in West Texas; Sheridan earned a well-deserved Academy Award nod for that one.

He also has been fortunate to see his projects embraced by strong casts delivering some of their finest work: from Emily Blunt’s naïve and idealistic FBI agent in Sicario; to the cat-and-mouse chase between Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham, in Hell or High Water. Good or bad, noble or ignominious, the characters are always fascinating: often bearing the burden of some degree of failure.

Sheridan also has an ear for both dialogue — the way people actually talk to each other — and, even more crucially, the way they behave with each other.

And now, with his quietly powerful Wind River, he has zeroed in on what remains of America’s frontier, which — sadly — also is a damning indictment of American history, and the utter failure to properly address past sins.

The setting is the snow-enshrouded, late winter/early spring environment of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, where U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) routinely employs his tracking skills to eliminate predators — wolves, mountain lions — caught killing livestock. He’s an honorable man, liked and respected by ranchers and just-plain-folks within and bordering the reservation.