Friday, March 24, 2000

Tip-off on a great basketball flick: 'Hoosiers'

Seems like the perfect season to recommend what is arguably the best basketball movie ever made. "Hoosiers" (1986) follows a 1950s-era team of Indiana high school boys and their new coach through one season that leads them to the state championship.
   Written by Angelo Pizzo and directed by David Anspaugh, the film is unapologetically formulaic, tugging the heartstrings right up to the final buzzer.
   The coach (played by the always pitch-perfect Gene Hackman) is a risk-taker and a bit of a firebrand. He's back at the small-town high school level hoping for victory after being fired from a better job for hitting a player.
   A loner looking to connect with the prettiest teacher (Barbara Hershey), the coach mercilessly drills his ragtag team of farm boys and preacher's kids, who clearly are terrified of him.
   The secondary plot concerns the alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper, in what was then a comeback role) of one of the team's strongest players. Turns out he used to be a basketball wizard with an encyclopedic knowledge of the competition's strengths and weaknesses. The coach needs his help. So he helps him sober up and wins back the respect of his son and the other townsfolk.
   The theme of challenge and redemption carries this fine little drama. The coach needs to redeem himself after failing on the college level. The alcoholic dad needs to redeem himself in the eyes of his son.
   The town looks to the young team as a way of redeeming themselves against their big-city counterparts.
   On it goes, game by game. Small crises erupt. The pushy parents don't like the coach's strict methods. But gradually the wins pile up and the boosters back off as they develop play-off fever.
   The build-up to the big last game is pure Americana, with great shots of pep rallies, prayers and old school buses chugging along the back roads on the way to another old school gym.
   The final game scenes are riveting. As the clock ticks down, you can feel the cinematic tension telegraphing the ending a mile ahead. But no matter. "Hoosiers" gets extra points for its thoroughly satisfying pay-off.
   "Hoosiers" is rated PG for some language and mild violence.
  
  
  
  

 
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