This documentary about a coach, a team, and
a star player will appeal to enthusiasts of both basketball and of sports films
like Glory Road.
This is one of those inspirational sports stories built
around an underdog team, an unlikely coach, and a star player. Well, the team
weren’t complete underdogs. Their school was Roosevelt High in Seattle, which
had a long record of sports success. But only when erstwhile tax professor Bill
Resler came along did the girls’ basketball team see much of it. Director Ward
Serrill started filming the team a few months later, when it was already clear
that Resler’s coaching had turned the Rough Riders into a powerhouse. The movie
is a third about the coach and his techniques, a third about the team as a
whole, and a third about Darnellia Russell, the team’s potential superstar.
Russell, unlike her mostly upper-middle class teammates, is from a poor
neighborhood, and was sent to Roosevelt, says her mother, to avoid the negative
elements associated with her neighborhood school. Of course, the
standard-bearer for basketball documentaries is the acclaimed Hoop Dreams.
This is very enjoyable to watch, but nowhere near as penetrating as that 1994
classic, even though, in Russell, it tells a similar story. It looks
like Serrill took awhile to figure out that his movie would focus on
Russell. The narration (by Ludacris) does a good job of telling the basic facts
of her story, but more of her own voice would have been helpful in showing her
personality, her reaction to her new school (where she was one of very few
black students), and how she felt about the obstacles she later encounters.
What Serrill does get is a photo finish that makes as exciting an end to his
story as he might have hoped for.
posted 8/15/13
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