Sports movies come in all flavors. Take Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” which draws a stylish, frenetic parallel between the athletes involved in its story’s central love triangle and their passionate love for the game of tennis. Guadagnino understands how to enliven a drama that thrives on this complex dynamic, resulting in a sports movie that feels fresh and exciting. On the flip side, we have intensely dramatic sports movies like “The Iron Claw,” which dramatizes the real-life tragedy of the Von Erich family while still thriving as a cinematic experience. Then there are stories that don’t explore the nuances of a sport or delve too deeply into the drama but still make for a decent, enjoyable genre movie, albeit one that’s easy to overlook. This brings us to Brian Robbins’ “Hardball,” a film about a morally grey protagonist who struggles to find salvation in coaching a baseball team full of rising talents.
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In “Hardball,” Keanu Reeves plays Conor O’Neill, an unscrupulous gambler/ticket scalper whose debt has piled up to the point of legal concern. When O’Neill has nothing left to bet on, he sets his eyes on his deceased father’s account — a compulsive decision that inevitably leads to unsavory consequences. While such circumstances are supposed to convey the tragic desperation that fuels unchecked gambling (something explored with great complexity in better films like “California Split” or “Uncut Gems”), “Hardball” consistently fails to appeal to our emotions. Even with Reeves pouring his heart into O’Neill’s hopeless compulsivity, the script doesn’t convey this urgency well enough for us to care.
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But “Hardball” isn’t all underwhelming mediocrity. Though it may lack a certain depth, it’s still a sports drama that is clearly meant to be inspiring. After all, the film is loosely based on Daniel Coyle’s “Hardball: A Season in the Projects,” which examines the challenges faced by a Little League baseball team from a Chicago housing project, along with the hard-earned triumph of those who push themselves to the limits. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the film.
Hardball is a serviceable sports drama that is bogged down by its inauthenticity
Apart from being one of Reeves’ lesser-known films, “Hardball” also features a young Michael B. Jordan, who plays Jamal, one of the oldest players on his school’s baseball team. This wasn’t Jordan’s first acting role (as he had starred briefly in episodes of “Cosby” and “The Sopranos” before this), but it was a prominent one alongside a blockbuster actor like Reeves, who was fresh off the explosive success of “The Matrix.” Although Jordan’s Jamal is not at the forefront of the film, the actor would go on to make his name into the sports drama genre with Ryan Coogler’s “Creed” more than a decade later. Jordan also starred in the sequels to that critically acclaimed movie, with the sleek, anime-inspired “Creed III” marking Jordan’s (impressive) directorial debut.
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Although both Jordan and Reeves fare well in “Hardball,” the story’s muddled approach to heavier subjects like addiction, where people often use adrenaline as their “drug” of choice, hurts what could have been a great high-stakes story. It also doesn’t know what kind of film it wants to be, as the dramatic climax isn’t a championship match or a personal crisis that Reeves’ O’Neill experiences. Instead, it’s an abrupt, uncomfortable burst of violence that doesn’t belong in the world of “Hardball.” The movie’s handling of this moment only underlines the tonal disparity between the incident and the story’s overarching themes.
What really sticks out like a sore thumb, however, is O’Neill himself, whose messed-up circumstances are conveyed in shades of haphazard behavior that aren’t coherent enough to make an impression. One minute, he is anxiously flippant and neck deep in debt, and in the other, he is suddenly free of his crippling addiction and is dedicated to being an upstanding coach. The inciting incident that is supposed to trigger this significant transformation is glossed right over, and before we know it, O’Neill is applauded for doing the bare minimum of ensuring that the kids on his team are safe.
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Even when the stakes in “Hardball” are high-ish, O’Neill’s behavior and everything else that happens around him simply rings inauthentic. It’s almost as if his heart’s not in it, even though the film wants us to desperately believe the opposite.
