Review: Rez Ball Shoots And Scores

It’s easy, and not altogether inaccurate, to describe a true-life sports-centric drama like Rez Ball as formulaic. But it’s difficult not to be swept up by that drama, and developing a vigorous rooting  interest in the central characters, when the formula is tweaked with as much skill and shrewdness as director/co-writer Sydney Freeland brings to this movie, which had its world premiere Sunday at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival, and the potent main ingredients include a cast of across-the-board most valuable players.

It's set to debut on Netflix on Sept. 27 after a limited theatrical run that kicks off Sept. 13 in Los Angeles and expands starting Sept. 20. Don’t be surprised if you hear even more about it during the cinematic equivalent of the NBA playoffs, the year-end awards season.

Inspired by Michael Powell’s critically acclaimed nonfiction book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, Rez Ball has been adapted and reconstituted by Freeland (Echo) and co-scripter Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs) into a compellingly streamlined narrative that remains engrossing and uplifting even as it covers familiar territory on and off the court.

Front and center is Dark Winds star Jessica Matten as Heather Hobbs, coach of a high school basketball team at a small-town New Mexico high school rich in Native American heritage. Coach Hobbs is tough but fair, demanding yet empathetic, as she drives herself and her Chuska Warriors to what she hopes will be a winning season. She knows that snaring a state championship would will help her students earn college scholarships — and, maybe, impress college athletic department heads who might offer herself a better job.

Winning by a close margin isn’t enough to please a taskmaster such as Hobbs — especially when she suspects her players might be coasting along against a lesser opponent. She repeatedly stresses the maxim of  up-tempo, pass-first “rez ball” competitors: “We run fast! We shoot fast! We don’t ever stop!”

Early on in Rez Ball, however, the Chuska Warriors game plan is upset by the suicide of Nataanii Jackson  (Kusem Goodwind), a brooding star player who evidently never fully recovered from the months-earlier deaths of his mother and sister in an auto mishap. In the Chuska, N.M. community, it’s not uncommon for despairing Indigenous young people to take their own lives. But that does little to reduce the impact Nataanii’s sudden death has on his best buddy and fellow Warrior, Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt) — who, even as he mourns the loss of his friend, finds himself thrust into the unaccustomed role of team leader.

Bratt, a newcomer with plenty of real-life high school basketball experience but virtually no acting background on his resume, gives what can only be described as a star-making performance as Jimmy, vividly illuminating every facet of a complex and sometimes contradictory character. Jimmy is under constant pressure as he handles schoolwork, the demands of a part-time job, and the virtually nonstop and brutally dispiriting naysaying of his mother, Gloria Holiday (Julia Jones), one of the least encouraging parents in all of sports-movie history.

Unable to work because of the raft of DUIs on her record, and heavily reliant on Jimmy’s minimum-wage income, Gloria warns her son not to pin his hopes on hoop dreams – because she herself flamed out as champion high-school basketballer (playing alongside Coach Hobbs back in the day) after trying to compete on the college level. Not surprisingly, she blames everyone but herself for her failure: “No matter how hard we try, we always find a way to lose. It’s in our blood… The higher you go, the greater the fall.”

Even less surprisingly, Jimmy resolves not to follow the family tradition — or to make excuses for himself because he’s playing on a team of chronically underestimated underdogs.

Rez Ball repeatedly hits predictable narrative beats — but, just as often, tosses in twists that reinvigorate and/or upend cliches common to this type of film. (The resolution of the mother-son conflict features wrinkles that generate a few pleasingly disruptive jolts of suspense.) There are welcome grace notes of comic relief sprinkled here and there, most notably when Jimmy tries to confuse other teams by teaching his teammates to call plays in the Navajo language of Diné. (When someone suggests this will be just like the World War II drama Windtalkers, another player cracks: “Except no Nicolas Cage!”)

And most important, there are wall-to-wall exceptional performances from a strong cast that includes, in addition to those already mentioned, Dallas Goldtooth (Reservation Dogs) as a spirited play-by-play announcer, Ernest Tsosie as Benny Begay (Drunktown’s Finest) as a retired coach enlisted to be Coach Hobb’s assistant, and Amber Midthunder (Prey) as Dezbah, one of the players’ supportive girlfriends.

Cheers to a game well played by hall-of-fame-level players on both sides of the camera.