"Pursuit of Excellence"
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Watch:
What You Need To Know:
THE HEART OF THE GAME brilliantly captures the passion and energy of the team, its colorful coach and its players. The camera watches intently as Coach Resler encourages the female players to think and act like a "tropical storm" or a "pack of wolves" to overwhelm their opponents. THE HEART OF THE GAME also has a positive, moral worldview that stresses hard work and good behavior, but some brief, strong foul language merits an extreme caution.
Content:
(BB, LL, V, M) Strong moral worldview stresses hard work, competition, determination, achievement, integrity, education, and training teenagers properly, and teenage girl has child out of wedlock but marries child's father, who otherwise seems like a supportive, living husband and father (movie does not seem to endorse such unwed pregnancies); 13 obscenities (including three "f" words that may be bleeped to retain a PG-13 rating) and seven light exclamatory profanities; some basketball violence such as players knocked down and a fist fight breaks out in one scene; no sex scenes; no nudity; no alcohol; no smoking; and, man is an aggressive coach but seems concerned about his players' life off the court.
More Detail:
THE HEART OF THE GAME is an uplifting documentary about girls’ basketball. The movie focuses on the efforts of Bill Resler as he tries to improve the prospects of a high school team in Seattle, Washington, on the mostly white side of town.
Director Ward Serrill visits the Roosevelt High School gym and finds Resler, a white college tax professor with a passion for basketball. For seven years, he follows Resler and the team’s exploits, including its highs and lows. One day, a young, black basketball phenom from the inner city named Darnellia Russell walks into the gym. Forced for academic reasons by her mother to attend Roosevelt, a better school, Darnellia quickly becomes the documentary’s second main character. A setback in her junior year results in a major controversy in the city league. Darnellia faces enormous obstacles as she and her senior teammates take their final shot at winning the state championship.
Seven years in the making, THE HEART OF THE GAME brilliantly captures the passion and energy of a prominent high school girls’ basketball team, its colorful coach and its players. The camera watches intently as Coach Resler encourages the players to think and act like “a pride of lions,” a “tropical storm” or a “pack of wolves” to overwhelm their opponents aggressively.
THE HEART OF THE GAME is a heartwarming, energetic documentary. The movie has a generous amount of clips from the team’s major basketball games and tournaments. It also has a positive, moral worldview that stresses hard work and good behavior, but some brief, strong foul language merits an extreme caution. There is also a subplot about a teenage pregnancy, but the plot ends with marriage and parental responsibility.
