Even after all these years, “He Got Game” (1998) might still do the best job of any movie when it comes to depicting the pressures and temptations of being a great athlete in the ghetto. It also has all the Spike Lee hallmarks: intelligent music choices, inventive editing and cinematography, and a strange mix of professional and amateur actors. The latter hurts the movie’s flow, because, frankly, some of the performances are awful. Ray Allen does OK as a high school basketball phenom. Among the pros, Denzel Washington is his usual amazing self and Jim Brown makes a welcome comeback.
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“Concussion” (2015) has the feel of a corporate espionage flick, what with all the liars in suits, suspicious suicides and a lonely hero raging against the machine. Except the machine is the NFL and we know how the story ends. Actually, the story hasn’t ended. For the next 40 years (think about that) retired athletes are going to be going mad and then dropping dead due to repeated blows to the head on the football field. Worse, for them, it’s already too late (think about that, too). It makes the film somewhat anticlimactic, despite a solid performance by Will Smith.
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