Last year, Steven Soderbergh released a movie called Unsane, shot entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus, to positive results. And Soderbergh himself seemed to like this style of filming, as he decided to shoot another movie entirely on an iPhone (this time an iPhone 8), titled High Flying Bird, which was released on Netflix back in February. Rather than using the iPhone technology to tell another horror movie like Unsane, this time Soderbergh dives into the world of basketball, though the results are unfortunately a little more mixed than his previous venture.
The movie follows a sports agent named Ray Burke (Andre Holland). In the middle of a lockout by the NBA, Ray is attempting to keep his clients appeased as the money still left to keep everyone afloat starts to run out. Going from meeting to meeting and finding his options becoming more limited, Ray comes up with a brilliant P.R. scheme where one of his clients, draft pick Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg) fires off a series of trash-talking Twitter exchanges with another player, so that they can then engage in an unofficial one-on-one match off-court, with Netflix (clever, Soderbergh) to document the exchange.
That’s a basic summary of Ray’s scheme, but the way in which he breaks the whole thing down, it does get a bit convoluted. Therein lies one of the movie’s biggest problems, as it may sometimes be difficult to totally follow what’s going on in this movie. Ray bounces around through countless individuals and has a lot on his mind. He’ll spill out all of his grand ideas and complicated plots that it’s sometimes unsure where his mind is currently focused. While everything eventually comes together, it does take quite a bit of time before the audience fully understands what’s happening.
Part of this reasoning is that this movie feels a bit like a niche movie. While it’s not a typical sports movie in the vein of Rocky or Rudy, it still feels heavily-geared towards sports fans. There’s a lot of lingo that can easily go over one’s head if they’re not familiar with basketball. It also takes a while to fully wrap one’s ahead around what a character is saying. While the movie does attempt to paint a picture of what it’s like being fully immersed in the world of the NBA - and it can still be enjoyed by non-sports fans - it’s those who are already well-versed in their basketball knowledge that will fully reap the benefits of this film.
While Ray is essentially the main character, this film is actually more of an ensemble piece, and its many dialogue-driven, character-based scenes evoke the feel of a Robert Altman movie. We get story lines that revolve around Ray’s assistant (Zazie Beetz), his mentor Spencer (Bill Duke), as well as the mother of Erick’s rival (Jeryl Prescott). Some of these stories work, in particular Prescott’s, who emphasizes the importance of being a strong, assertive female figure in the male-dominated NBA. Others, not so much, with Beetz’ story line never reaching some of the same dramatic heights as the others, and seemingly going nowhere. The film crams a lot into its 90 minute run time, though some of these stories feel a bit like filler, which is disenchanting for a movie with such a brief run time.
It’s a shame that not everyone is properly utilized, as there are plenty of fine actors in this film, all of whom work well with the material they’re given. Holland is effectively solid as Ray, giving a quick-witted, charismatic performance that helps set the film’s fast-paced feel. There are a number of notable other faces that pop up, including the likes of Zachary Quinto and Kyle MacLachlan, as well appearances by NBA stars Reggie Jackson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Donovan Mitchell as themselves during interviews that take place in between scenes. Though the only ones who feel like they’re put to the best use are the aforementioned Prescott and Duke, as their characters are some of the most developed.
As mentioned, the film is shot entirely on an iPhone 8, and while an iPhone does take some really nice videos, it is obviously a lesser quality than filming on professional video equipment. This look does give the film a very grainy sort of feel, and is meant to capture the grittiness of actual NBA life. While it mostly succeeds in this endeavor, it does tend to be a bit too grainy, and the quality isn’t exactly the most appealing to see.
The film also - for the most part - lacks a soundtrack. It’s not completely void of music, but for the scenes that have an accompanying score, many songs are barely audible. Another film that recently went down this road was another Netflix movie, Roma. While this worked for Roma, as it was so beautifully filmed that it didn’t need any accompanying music, this tends to hurt High Flying Bird a bit. Bird is not exactly the most visually appealing movie for the most part, due to its low quality visuals. And to not have any underlying score accompanying the visuals doesn’t allow many scenes to immediately stand out, sometimes giving them a plain feel. At times, it often feels like we’re watching a bootleg copy of a higher-quality film.
High Flying Bird isn’t a bad movie, but it’s definitely a movie geared towards one specific audience. A fast paced movie that mostly spits out dialogue-driven scenes filled with basketball jargon, basketball fans will definitely enjoy this more than a non-sports fan. For the uninitiated, it’ll be hard to stick with this, as it has storylines that don’t always seem to go anywhere, dialogue and plot points that can be sometimes hard to follow, and isn't the most visually-appealing experience. While far from Soderbergh’s worst, he’s certainly done much better.
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