Rez Ball scores its fair share of points on the cinematic court

Nestled within Chuska, New Mexico is a high school basketball team with lots of potential. The Chuska Warriors, comprised of individuals from the Navajo Nation, grip the local community with their various ups and downs. Star players Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind) and his best friend Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt) especially demonstrate impressive skills on the court. Still, Coach Matten (Heather Hobbs) keeps reminding them to work with the whole team and not just each other.

There's already lots of emotional weight anchored to the team as they all grapple with the loss of Nataanii’s mother and sister. However, the Chuska Warriors are soon deprived of Nataanii himself. These young men have lost a friend, a brother, and their most reliable player. The Chuska Warriors disintegrate into chaos here, with remaining players like Jimmy more determined than ever to look out only for themselves. Coach Matten knows the Warriors can go all the way to the championship. However, she needs to take drastic measures, including incorporating a playing style known as Rez Ball, to get the group back on track.

Recently, various live-action family movies have seemed determined to deliver features Disney used to specialize in before the Mouse House focused on Marvel titles and live-action remakes of animated titles. Wonka, IF, and The Boys in the Boat all debuted in the last nine months with aesthetics and storylines that could've easily been preceded by the "flashlight" variant of the Walt Disney Pictures logo once upon a time. Now it’s Rez Ball’s turn on this court. Writer/director Sydney Freeland (who penned this script with Sterlin Hajo) decidedly molds Rez Ball in the style of Disney underdog sports movies like Remember the Titans, Miracle, and Secretariat.

These kinds of titles live or die based on their emotional accessibility. A Cool Runnings or Miracle has stakes you can immediately invest in. Others, like Invincible, We Are Marshall, and American Underdog, have vaguely defined or unengaging protagonists. The entire production fumbles the ball right from the start. Million Dollar Arm especially suffered from this problem. That 2014 feature sidelined its three most interesting characters (a trio of Indian cricket players coming to America for the first time to play baseball) in favor of focusing on Jon Hamm’s sex life. Thankfully, the Drunktown’s Finest director’s foray into inspirational sports cinema largely lands in the former camp. This is partially because she and Hajo aren’t afraid to go to darker places within the narrative.

As one sports broadcaster notes midway through Rez Ball, the Chuska Warriors and other local basketball teams provide welcome relief for Chuska Navajo residents. Alcoholism, lack of employment opportunities, mental health struggles, they all run rampant here. So common are these issues that Jimmy’s mother, Gloria (Julia Jones), resigns herself to never seeing her son play basketball or flourish in life. "I've been to too many funerals," Gloria painfully observes, before remaking that when it comes to indigenous people, "No matter how hard we try, we always find a way to lose." Gloria's outlook encapsulates a grim vision of indigenous existence the same way Takashi Shimura's Doctor Sanada personifies a dour perspective on human nature in Drunken Angel's ending.

However, Drunken Angel challenged Sanada's pessimism with the sudden arrival of a previously doomed patient. So too does Rez Ball have Jimmy and Coach Matten provide a hopeful counterpoint to Gloria’s point-of-view. These contrasting worldviews don’t downplay or eliminate very real problems hurting the Navajo people and American indigenous communities writ large. They’re very real and treated with gravity within Rez Ball’s runtime. However, Jimmy and his teammates develop on-court unity reminding everyone of possibilities existing in the face of colonialism’s lingering horrors. This thematic thread in Rez Ball’s narrative lends extra power to its dribbling-heavy sequence. It also nicely reverberates through team-building exercises like the Chuska Warriors needing to herd sheep together.

There’s a delicate balance here between recognizing brutal reality and not solely defining this sports movie by it. Committing to that nuanced material instantly propels Rez Ball above the likes of Champions or Here Comes the Boom. As a sweet cherry on top, Freeland and cinematographer Kira Kelly employ some welcome creativity in realizing big basketball scenes. An extended tracking shot of the Chuska Warriors playing while on-screen text relaying their various wins pops up in various corners of the frame is very well done. Best of all is a collection of pivotal free throws from Jimmy. These are largely captured in a darkened void punctuated only by beaming spotlights. It’s a more stylized backdrop echoing the deeply memorable visuals defining the boxing finale of Creed III.

Freeland and Hajo’s screenplay has a more mixed track record, though, when it comes to juggling its various plotlines. Rez Ball concludes with a sequence lingering on Jimmy and his mother. This precise timing signifies this is the preceding movie's central emotional core. However, this dynamic sometimes vanishes in the shuffle of various plot threads. These include Matten reaffirming her value as a coach or a frayed dynamic between teammates Jimmy and Bryson (Devin Sampson-Craig). Other supporting players, like one Chuska Warriors player obsessed with live streams or formerly retired coach Benny (Ernest David Tsosie), fade deep into the background amidst so much storytelling.

Rez Ball’s finale had me clutching my firsts and murmuring “c’mon” like any good sports movie should. However, the conclusion’s emotional catharsis would’ve been extra sweeter if every narrative path led to this big game. Meanwhile, more pronounced touches within the script, like a lady bully calling Jimmy “titty baby” or certain more melodramatic pieces of dialogue, teeter things more into the territory of Full-Court Miracle than Moneyball. Crushingly, while basketball-centric sequences are shot well, Freeland and Kelly otherwise frame Rez Ball largely like a standard Netflix original movie. Wider shots are few and far between while staging of individual scenes doesn’t demonstrate much imagination.

Rez Ball doesn’t rewrite the rulebook for sports movies, but then again, few of these ever do. The best modern entries in this genre, like Hustle or Ford v. Ferrari, never escape predictability. They do, however, find emotionally stimulating ways to make the familiar fresh again. Rez Ball can’t score those levels of creative heights. However, it’s still a better-than-average entry into this crowded domain. If high school basketball players across the country aren’t murmuring “stoodis!” (Jimmy and friend’s go-to phrase to utter before a game) on the court shortly after Rez Ball drops, then we’ll finally know once and for all Netflix original movies don’t have much pop culture impact.