Fans of the Sandman know it’s often feast or famine when the comedic superstar steps away from his traditional juvenile humor. The highs are high, and the lows are low. For every “The Meyerowitz Stories,” there’s “The Cobbler;” for every “Uncut Gems,” a “Reign on Me.” “Hustle,” the latest output from Adam Sandler’s longstanding deal with streaming giant Netflix, marks his rare personal project to occupy a middle ground between these two poles: fulfilling and frustrating in fits and starts.
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Not since “Funny People” has the star turned such an affectingly personal and wistful profile to the camera. And yet for all the fascinating meta-commentary this turn invites, the film never meets him in the middle. A hackneyed script from screenwriters Taylor Materne and Will Fetters avoids hokiness yet focuses far too much on hitting each established beat of the inspirational sports drama. “Hustle” never grasps that the clichés can still resonate so long as an audience feels like they are watching fully human figures living out each plot point. With little more than a logline of character description to go off, it’s up to Sandler and director Jeremiah Zagar to fill the void with their own artistry. And, luckily, they bring their A-game.
Though real ones know Sandler can ball (and dress the part), his character Stanley Sugerman is but a front-office functionary for the Philadelphia 76ers, scouting for unconventional talent. Picture Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane from “Moneyball,” but with a passion for people rather than data. Rapid-fire cutting from Tom Costain and Brian M. Robinson establishes the hectic pace of Stanley’s profession that leaves him weary but never entirely squelches his enthusiasm for the game. An energetic Sandler rolls with the punches, yet Zagar is wise enough to leave the camera rolling long enough to catch the character’s creeping uncertainty and self-doubt in his precious moments of reflective stillness.
At just the moment when his globe-trotting mission pays off with a coveted coaching gig, the team’s elderly owner (Robert Duvall) passes away. This transfers ownership to his son (an uncharacteristically quiet Ben Foster), a rival of Stanley’s who feels threatened by his superior scouting skills and scuttles him away from further authority. With few other options to prove his value to the team, Stanley lobs up the career equivalent of a half-court shot: bringing in Bo Cruz (NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), an untested prospect from Spain’s streetball scene, back to the States to perform at the Combine.
If there’s one thing “Hustle” excels at, it’s translating the immediacy of Bo’s street style into cinematic terms. Cinematographer Zak Mulligan rejects shooting basketball with the kind of full-court coverage that would make the matchups look like an ESPN crew captured them. His propulsive camerawork captures the clash of personalities first and foremost. Where the ball is at any given moment feels secondary because the camera invests in the duel. As far as aesthetics go, it’s the closest the sport of basketball has come to “Raging Bull.” Especially inside a genre framework where an eventual triumph seems like a foregone conclusion, Mulligan’s inspired lensing introduces a fresh element of conflict worth leaning in for.
Especially when weighed against these dynamic sequences, the emotional core of the film never quite catches on as well as its visceral components do. Sandler and Hernangómez do the best with what they get in “Hustle,” which amounts to a satisfying if standard-issue aging mentor and brash mentee relationship. Stanley is an unconventional Miyagi figure, to say the least, and the movie has some fun in sequences where he has to reign in Bo’s excesses. If a sports movie must have the requisite training montage or viral video moment, it should at least have as much fun as this one does.
Where the two men differ in style, they converge in sharing a chip on their shoulders from past mistakes they cannot seem to shake. Zagar recognizes that the comedian has two modes of deploying his humor – an offensive charm as well as a defensive shield – both of which serve as a way to avoid the ache lurking beneath his outsized persona. Sandler demonstrates that he can still find new angles to explore regret and squandered possibility, but he’s left hanging out to dry by a script that can’t give him more than a single scene exploring one lingering traumatic incident. The film is too eager to convert his pain into catharsis and connection, never giving Sandler the chance to dwell on his character’s underlying motivations.
“Hustle” grows dependent on Sandler to supersede the actual text with the meta text he brings to the project. A star player can carry a team, but it would help if he could draw from a deeper bench beyond a parade of NBA cameos or Queen Latifah as his long-suffering wife. That same timidity undermines the film’s Horatio Alger myth of triumphing over adversity because it refuses to address, much less interrogate, the dynamics of colonialism and classism that relegate a streetball prospect like Bo to entering the league through a side door. (Unofficial NBA ambassador LeBron James’ involvement as a producer on the film does cast certain themes in a smugly self-congratulatory light.)
There’s enough craft and heart involved in “Hustle” to keep it from feeling like just a league PSA or an algorithmically crafted Netflix product. Those elements go a long way, but solid execution can only take a well-worn playbook so far. [B]