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Rez Ball Gives Navajo Teens Their Own Friday Night Lights
Co-written by Reservation Dogs’s Sterlin Harjo, this Netflix drama could have strayed a little further from the inspirational sports-pap playbook.
Powell threw a spotlight on not just the particulars of rez ball — a faster, more intense version of the game played on reservations in the Southwest — but also the hardships facing the players, whose families coped with unemployment, domestic violence, alcoholism, and suicidal ideation. Navajo director Sydney Freeland, who co-wrote the film with Reservation Dogs ’s co-creator Sterlin Harjo, parallels Jimmy’s emotional crucible with that of his mother, Gloria (Julia Jones), a former teenage-basketball star reluctant to support her son’s hoop dreams, perhaps out of fear they’ll lead him down the same path to disappointment she’s walked. Collapsing a whole season into a series of glossy highlight reels, overlaying its court action with swells of inspirational music (composed by indie electronic star Dan Deacon, who also did the soundtrack for another Netflix basketball drama, Hustle), arranging a rematch with the trash-talking suburban teens who trounced them in the first act: Crowd-pleasing cliché wins the day at the buzzer.
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