Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Brand: Team Marketing EAN: 9786305144151 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC ISBN: 630514415X Label: Walt Disney Video Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video Number Of Items: 1 Picture Format: Letterbox Publisher: Walt Disney Video Release Date: November 10, 1998 Running Time: 136 minutes Sales Rank: 5487 Studio: Walt Disney Video Theatrical Release Date: May 01, 1998
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Product Description: Academy Award(R)-winner Denzel Washington (Best Actor, 2001, TRAINING DAY) stars in this must-see story about a convict given one shot at a second chance to be a father! With promises of a reduced sentence, Jake Shuttlesworth (Washington) is granted temporary release from state prison in order to persuade the nation's top basketball recruit ... his estranged son, Jesus (Ray Allen of NBA's Milwaukee Bucks), to play ball for the governor's alma mater! But just as Jesus faces intense pressures and irresistible temptations contemplating his big decision, Jake is also forced to consider not only what's best for himself ... but what's best for his son! With a groundbreaking soundtrack by the legendary Public Enemy -- plus great cameos from John Turturro and basketball personalities Dick Vitale, John Thompson, Dean Smith, and more, HE GOT GAME is a critically acclaimed hit you don't want to miss!
Amazon.com essential video: As a filmmaker and passionate fan of basketball, Spike Lee was the perfect director for this ambitious and heartfelt sports drama, which brought out the best in both Lee and his well-chosen cast. In his third film for Lee, Denzel Washington plays Jake Shuttlesworth, who is in prison for the manslaughter of his wife. His estranged son Jesus (well played by Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Ray Allen) is the nation's best high school basketball star, and Jake receives a compelling offer from the state's governor: If Jake can convince Jesus to sign a letter of intent to attend Big State University, the governor will reduce his sentence. Lee turns this back-room bargain into a fascinating examination of capitalism in college and professional sports, but the film also works as the moving story of a father's desperate attempt to regain his son's respect. Lee handles the basketball angle with an insider's awareness, and takes a few stylistic risks (including a memorable final image) that pay off with considerable emotional effect. He Got Game fully explores the visual poetry of basketball and the greed that fuels this particular vision of the American dream, but Lee never loses sight of the sport's inherent beauty, or the higher priorities of redemption and family that form the solid foundation of this exceptional film. --Jeff Shannon
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Average Rating:
Rating: - Moving and deep; far more than your average sports film...
In 2001 Denzel Washington finally won his `Leading Actor' Oscar despite the fact that three of the four remaining nominees put in better performances than he did (those three would be, in descending order, Wilkinson, Crowe and Smith). I'm not saying that Washington's portrayal of Alonzo in `Training Day' was bad or even mediocre. He was a pistol, really electrifying the screen with his commanding presence, and he scores major points for taking himself away from the `dead eye stare' I see him give all too often (watch `American Gangster') and really igniting his face. That said, he still was not the best of the year.
I bring up this point, not because I want to raise my voice in disapproval, but because I want to draw a major comparison in character between Alonzo and Washington's character Jake Shuttlesworth in `He Got Game'. Both characters have that swagger, that jive and that fire, yet Jake is ... Read More
Rating: - Really?
Good movie if your my generation basketball fan brings me back lol. They actually offered the role first to Allen Iverson who turned it down!
Rating: - Inner strife and self hatred are the worst enemies
This film shows the real crossroads where the Blacks are in America, and I say the Blacks because they call themselves Blacks and not Afro-Americans or African Americans. The mother is dead, killed accidentally in a temper but the father. The father is in prison for a very long time. The son hates his father and has to learn how to get over his hatred. The daughter is missing her father but her brother is isolating her. The uncle and aunt only see the money the son represents. He is a high school star in basketball and he can get directly into making a lot of money if he joins the NBA or he can go to some university and have a scholarship. One more tricky element: the governor wants the kid for the team of his university, the one he sponsors and likes. So why not use the father, give him a week of semi freedom and force him thus to negotiate his son's signing the right papers. What's more the basketball star is invited ... Read More
Rating: - Lee Got Game
"He Got Game" is another solid outing for director Spike Lee. He paints a realistic picture of life for a inner city basketball phenom and its many demands and pressures. Ray Allen isn't as proficient an actor as he is a shooting guard, yet his performance works here. Denzel Washington and a supporting cast of Lee film veterans deliver in their roles, making up for any inexperience Allen has. Washington is impressive as Allen's father, a convicted felon who is given a short work release to try to convince his star son to attend the governeor's alma mater. Revisiting this film about 9 years after its release, I still feel entertained and connected with the main characters. I feel it stands as a triumph for Lee and a good tale of basketball, exploitation, wounded family relations, and redemption (in a way).
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