Review of Rez Ball, directed by Sydney Freeland

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this page through the depths of the Internet, or Google, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I used to be a professional film critic at an international online outlet. It was such a cool time when I worked as a critic, but I wanted to break free and do my own thing for a while, especially as my interests are more international and indie cinema.

That said, I created this blog four years ago as a form of doing my own thing. For movies I do reviews and summaries, but I do regular old reviews for books, television, theater and then do travel and career anecdotes on the side. If you liked what you read here, feel free to click around and see what happens.

I feel like as of late that Native American and indigenous cinema and television is going through a bit of a Renaissance. I’ve always loved consuming Native perspectives in literature and the arts, especially after graduate school. My first semester of my graduate program I took a class on postcolonialism and decolonization through Native perspectives, and it kickstarted what I think will be a lifelong interest.

I’ve been watching quite a few Native shows and movies, and Rez Ball was one of them. I’ve been mainly finding these kinds of shows available on Netflix; I’ve been so impressed with the kinds of content they’re carrying lately. More diversity than some of the other platforms I’ve been using.

I don’t want to ramble too much, so let’s get into the review! I know introductions can get really long in a blog post and I want to avoid that.

A Native American boy’s basketball team looks to break barriers and win the state championship.

In this movie, our main character is Jimmy, but it doesn’t seem like that at first. He’s on a basketball team in a Native American community’s high school, and they’re considered to be real hotshots and considered to be one of the top teams in the area. This in, in fact, due to the presence of their star player Nataanii.

Nataanii and Jimmy are best friends, so when Nataanii’s family, except for his father, is killed in a tragic accident, the community comes together to mourn. Jimmy especially sees how Nataanii’s is torn up about his family members’ deaths, but no one is able to stop him from destroying himself.

Jimmy is also struggling himself in some ways. His mother Gloria is an alcoholic and unable to really support them, so Jimmy spends his mornings working at a fast food joint in order to make ends meet. Basketball and his friends are really some of the only ways to escape for him.

It’s at a game, where the team struggles without their star player, that the police go to the court and tells their coach Heather what really happened. The boys gather in the locker room, where Heather and the adult figures reveal that Nataanii killed himself. His father is now the sole survivor of the family, but Jimmy is torn up as well about this.

Now in the process of grieving, the team doesn’t know what to do without their player and friend. It’s in his memory that that they choose to keep on fighting, but there are many struggles along the way.

We learn Jimmy’s mother is someone who was on the star girls’ team years ago, and was a teammate of Heather’s. She warns Jimmy away from basketball not out of malice, but because she sees how she ended up and doesn’t want her son to end up like her. She never even goes to his games because of the pain she experiences in her everyday life.

The boys are not a cohesive unit as well, which forces Heather to try make some team building happen here. One of the most iconic scenes is where she takes them to her little grandmother’s house and forces them to herd sheep the old fashioned way. They have to work together to get all of the sheep back in the pen, which makes the boys relearn that they are friends and teammates after all that happened.

Heather’s side plot is that she’s applying for jobs elsewhere. I can’t imagine being a high school boys’ basketball coach near a reservation is making much money, but she has ambition and wants to go places. But as the boys starting becoming more successful again, she learns that she’s happy right where she is.

We also see some drama from the side plot involving another basketball team. As the boys study Navajo and try to put their plays in Navajo, an uppity white-led team from the city sneers at them and memorizes their plays in time for the state championship.

But as Jimmy’s mother races to get there and ends up with a DUI, the boys take home the crown and win pride for their community and Nataani’s memory.

Overall Thoughts

I genuinely enjoyed this movie a lot. It’s a classic coming of age and sports movie, but it has a lot of heart in it, plus we get to see a glimpse of an underrepresented population in these tropes. I didn’t mind the trope aspect of it because of that, and because I had only seen the basic synopsis going into this, I was shocked to see suicide so heavily be depicted.

I don’t have a ton to say about this movie, which is unusual for me! I usually find that I have a lot to say about movies, but this one I just really liked and that’s all. I also have a minor crush on the actress who plays the basketball coach, and thought she made a good combo with the other guy she brought on to coach.

Go watch it if you haven’t already. Movies like these are critical and important in today’s world!

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