Adam Sandler is one of the actors who annoyed me for a long, long time and I couldn’t watch those silly comedies of his that he filmed in his younger days. But in The Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, he was great to me as a jeweler in serious trouble, and he keeps in good shape in this sports humor drama as well. Sandler is actually the main “culprit” why this basketball Rocky was actually filmed, since he is also a producer with LeBron James, and thanks to Sandler’s insistence, the director accepted the indie filmmaker from Philadelphia, where “Hustle” takes place, Jeremiah Zagar .
A few years ago, Zagar presented himself with the poetic, lyrical almost Malick’s coming-of-age drama “We the Animals”, and although we could really watch sports dramas about various outsiders, he managed to breathe new life into this seemingly chewed-up story. Sandler is thus Stanley Sugarman, a former basketball star from college who had to end his career after a serious injury and he hoped to become a coach. He is currently working as a scout for the NBA franchise Philadelphia 76ers, and he will see his chance to return to the big stage when somewhere in Spain, he finds the incredibly talented 22-year-old Baustel player Bo Cruz (Spanish national team player Juancho Hernangomez who actually plays for Utah Jazz). .
This poor guy is a real basketball marvel and earns extra pocket money by hustling on the courts, and Sugarman will see in him an uncut diamond that could be a big star and a wheel missing from the 76ers. But the problem is that the old owner of the club (Robert Duvall) has just died, and the young boss (Ben Foster) doesn’t really like him, so they will both have to prove themselves. While it’s clear from the start how that story will end and that screenwriters Will Fetters and Taylor Materne have largely stuck to classic formulas when it comes to sports dramas like this, I liked “Hustle” maybe more than it should have.
One of the reasons is certainly that technically it is quite different from all the basketball movies I’ve seen before and Zagar used some innovative shooting techniques and the viewer almost has the impression that he is on the field with all these basketball players. Adding realism to the whole story is the fact that all the actors in the film, with the exception of a few of the main ones, are real professional basketball players. From the introductory scene when Sugarman arrives as a scout in a dilapidated hall in Serbia to watch a two and a half meter basketball player there, played by the famous center Boban Marjanović, it is clear that it will be a completely different basketball film from all previous ones.
Although “Hustle” is almost a classic sports drama in terms of genre, it was occasionally quite solid with humor, and although it is clear that the Spanish professional who plays Boa Cruz has no previous acting experience, in this case it was more important for me to believe that he is really perfect. basketball player. A good dynamics of the relationship between the two main characters has been achieved, Sandler is not irritating, he is even sympathetic, dear, and although “Hustle” is dangerously clichéd, it is a film that is easy to love. Especially if you love the joy of bowling under the hoops. Rating 8/10.
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