Hustle

Grade: B

It is always fun when an actor I don’t enjoy very often shows me they can be good. Somehow, all the stars align, and a role comes along that is a perfect fit. Keanu Reeves in The Gift, Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, and Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network all come to mind. I’m interested to hear yours. Hustle, a new Netflix original, features Adam Sandler in his best performance since Uncut Gems, which was his best since Punch Drunk Love. There’s a scene where he is on the phone – doing his usual yelling – trying to persuade. It reminded me of the bellowing he did in Big Daddy upon learning he just missed McDonalds’ breakfast menu, or when his ball didn’t quite get in the hole in Happy Gilmore. But it is put to better use here.

He plays Stanley, a basketball talent scout for the Philadelphia 76ers. While in Spain, he is impressed by a local player he happens upon one night on a court. This is 22-year-old Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangomez, a real-life player for the Utah Jazz). Stanley goes out on a limb, introduces himself, and brings him to the states, where he takes the kid under his wing. He wakes Bo up at 4am almost daily for intense coaching sessions, which include runs up South Philly hills, gym time, and learning how to deal with trash talk on the court. These are some of the longest montages I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s impossible not to think of Rocky, but the movie is clever enough to have Stanley give a “Yay, Rocky!” cheer, to get there first, and let us know it’s aware of its derivative tangent.

Sandler gives us a fleshed-out, likable, believable character. His specific style and mannerisms are just what’s needed here. Basketball is in his blood. It’s his comfort zone. You can hear it in his voice. The rest of the casting is welcome and inspired. Queen Latifah plays his wife, Ben Foster is memorable as one of the closest things we have to a villain, and we briefly get Robert Duvall and Steve Urkel himself – Jaleel White. Many many basketball players appear as themselves, which the film lets us know about, in a laborious bloated credits sequence.

The unmistakable squeak of shoes on the court has an almost hypnotic effect here. Worn-out conventions of the genre are refreshingly eschewed. The happy ending has a slight twist I didn’t expect. Things don’t conclude with a bombastic showdown where everything hinges on the last shot of the last second of the final quarter of the season. Hustle possesses a palpable love of the game, and successfully projects that out to the audience.

Grade: B