I wonder if future generations will try to sum up and categorize Adam Sandler one day, so what is the epic adjective beside his name? Are you a comedian? A favorite of American filmmakers? Generation X’s response to Jerry Lewis? A rowdy entrepreneur extracting the maximum out of Netflix with his movie company, signed by The Good God, knows how many co-productions? For Sandler, they’re all true, and they usually change several times in a year to show the world which one they’re showing, which is a good example that not a year passed between the Extreme Diamonds and Hubie Halloween.
Hustle (Hungarian: everything on a sheet of paper) is middle ground, a dangerous streak like 2007. The empty city where Sandler can be serious, but not disgustingly serious, can have grief and defeat, but it won’t surprise anyone with what you do. Sandler plays scout Stanley Sugerman, Philadelphia 76ers based in the NBA (six in lingua), a player-watcher tasked with traveling the world and discovering talent. Sugerman is not a particularly demanding person, no matter how we see the montage at the beginning of the movie who can travel around the world all over the world, he spends most of his time in front of his laptop in hotel rooms, devouring disgusting fast food.
When a game hits a well on one of these runs, he starts wandering around an unnamed Spanish town and finds Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangomes) is over two meters tall beating everyone on the asphalt on the street ball court. Sugerman discovers he’s the kind of crazy gamer still missing from The Sixers, and he does everything he can to get him to the States. And it’s not smooth sailing either, because the new team boss, the son of the original owner (Ben Foster), doesn’t even want to see the Spaniards.
Hustle is a sports movie and doesn’t hide the fact that it operates by its own rules. There is a coach who will probably have the last big throws of his life, he has a mentor in front of his first big throws, and there is a difficult relationship between them until he becomes strong one day. Sandler has so much inspiring talk in this movie that his character actually talks about it at the end, and director Jeremiah Zagar traditionally allows the camera to look at the star at this point, as with his tired eyes, worn face, and overgrown beard with his tired hands in protective gloves. According to his role, he tells great music that he must hear. convincing until then. And even as he tries to live his family life with his ex-wife (Queen Latifah) and his teenage girl who has no interest in sports at all (Jordan Hull).
Photography by Scott Yamano/Netflix
Hustle is a sports movie, in many ways, because it not only follows the rules of the genre but also documents the current state of the sport. The Spanish hopeful Hernangomez is actually played by Utah Jazz player, Minnesota perennial rival Anthony Edwards, film producer LeBron James, and in coaches, journalists, commentators, veterans, and the folks most likely to speak up. The pulse of those who follow the NBA.
I don’t follow the NBA at all, and for a long time during Hustle I thought it could be a nightmare for roles like basketball players here because the original game was expected of them in so many ways. The Hernangómez speciel on the field is a thousand times more realistic than off the field, and luckily most acting is required right on the field when trying to meet the mental and physical expectations of top American sports. That is, he trains until he collapses and tries to tolerate the insults of others until he collapses.
Hustle is a sports movie, but it at least tries to do better than the average: its great strength is that it takes place in Philadelphia, on city streets that aren’t scenic, but are full of authentic faces and senses to the environment (director Zagar grew up in the city), as The signal is located at the top of the stairs.
The other strength is that thanks to the creative and distinguished team we get a very detailed picture of the world of professional basketball, training sessions, training techniques, choices and intrigues in the background. Not as detailed as the Flying Bird of 2019, set mostly in the world of agents and managers, through which, as an ordinary person, it is impossible to understand even a stinky rooster, and its scheme is not very close to understanding what is at stake, but this also gives more insight This world is more than we might expect.
The most beautiful thing is when these things come together and we get a real, amazing montage in a sports movie, which is already familiar in the streets and gyms of Philadelphia, with gymnastics completely incomprehensible as an ordinary person, then the montage escalates, resumes after a short break, just as Bo’s preparations escalate Cruz, culminates, then resumes after a short break.
Juancho Hernangomez and Anthony Edwards – Photography by Scott Yamano/Netflix
But Hustle doesn’t hold many surprises, as the sparkling dramas (Sugerman’s injured hand, Bo Cruz’s dystopian past) are balls that have fallen without any flip-flops, just as we’ve come to expect. The ending is not only different from what we might get used to, but it also seems only superficial: it will be a happy ending that doesn’t seem like it at all at first.
And Hustle seems to be a perfectly clever movie in which Adam Sandler is well in his element, the filmmaking is fast enough not to get bored for a minute (Zagar always knows where to put the camera so we don’t get bored of his constant packing), the dramatic situations are predictable Its but it’s always authentic, and the basketball side guys are all enduring characters and we’ll be familiar with a little more by the end than before. These are sometimes appreciated.
Everything in one tab (Hustle) is visible on Netflix.
