Hoop Dreams

Long before our televisions got filled with reality shows, and even a little before film documentaries were a popular option on home video and in theaters around the world, there was 'Hoop Dreams' – a look at the lives of two up-and-coming high school kids with hopes of making it all the way to the NBA. If 'Hoop Dreams' was just a movie about sports, it probably would have come and gone. But it's so much more than that. It's an inside look at two families growing up in the inner city of Chicago, and all the trials and tribulations that come with it. Even 20 years later, 'Hoop Dreams' resonates, because many of the problems/issues that were in society in the early 90s are still with us today.

Filmmakers Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert, and Steve James (who directed) spent eight years bringing 'Hoop Dreams' to the screen, and five years actually filming the events in the lives of the two young men who are the focal points of the movie. Their names are Arthur Agee and William Gates, and 'Hoop Dreams' introduces us to them both in their freshman year of high school, where both young men leave their local public school and join the much more upper-class St. Joseph's High School, which recruits young basketball talent from the greater Chicago area.

Early on, it becomes obvious that William may have more pure basketball talent between the two young men. He's put on St. Joseph's varsity squad, while Arthur struggles more and is eventually dismissed from the school when his parents can no longer afford to pay for it (William, on the other hand, gets a donor to sponsor his education there). So while Arthur is forced to continue his basketball dreams back at his local high school, William stays at St. Joseph's through his senior year. However, a nagging and continuing knee injury threatens to derail both William's high school basketball career as well as his hopes for a college one.

One doesn’t need to be a fan of basketball to be engaged in 'Hoop Dreams', as there's so much more going on here than just these two young men's athletics. It's their home lives that really engage the viewer, particularly (at least for me), young Arthur's – who has a dad who goes in and out of his life during the course of the film, including a stint in jail for drugs. In many ways, the father is as much of a pivotal character in 'Hoop Dreams' as the two boys are, as we watch a man who is struggling with many demons in his life but still has an obvious love for his son and wants to see him do well.

The legacy of 'Hoop Dreams' is that, sadly, not a whole lot has changed in American life in the 20 years since this documentary came out. Racism and poverty are still a big issue, particularly in the inner cities of large metropolises. Crime and drug addiction still riddle many of our communities. And, perhaps more sadly, high school and college sports are still about the almighty dollar and less about the well-being and education of students who have an athletic gift.

At nearly three-hours in length, 'Hoop Dreams' may sound like a daunting challenge to sit through for the uninitiated, however, it's anything but that. Not only does the time fly by, but the extended length enables the viewer to become more engaged in the two families that are presented here, which makes their triumphs along the way more inspiring and their failures more heartbreaking. There's little doubt that 'Hoop Dreams' had a big influence on the type of 'reality' TV we see today, but there's one big exception: there's no manipulation by the filmmakers to help make their movie 'better'. What we get here is reality in its rawest form, and that's what makes 'Hoop Dreams' one of the best documentaries ever made.

The Blu-Ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Hoop Dreams' shoots its way onto Blu-ray in a standard Criterion keepcase (produced by Scanavo), which houses the 50GB Blu-ray disc, along with a fold-out leaflet, which sadly Criterion now seems to be using instead of producing a nice booklet. The leaflet features photos, a cast list, and technical info on one side, and a pair of essays on the reverse side: one by writer John Edgar Wideman, and the other by filmmaker/writer Robert Greene.

Like the majority of Criterion releases, there are no front-loaded trailers on the Blu-ray, whose menu looks like a typical Criterion one, with selections along the left side of the screen and a montage of video footage from the movie playing in the background.

The Blu-ray is Region A locked.