nO means nO

O (2001)

Rated: R

Runtime: 95 minutes

Stars: Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Martin Sheen, John Heard, Elden Henson, Andrew Keegan, Rain Phoenix, Rachel Shumate

Director: Tim Blake Nelson

Plot: Odin (Mekhi Phifer) is the star player on the Palmetto Grove Hawks high school basketball team. Hugo (Josh Hartnett) is the underappreciated son of the coach on the team. Desi (Julia Stiles) is Odin’s girlfriend and daughter of the dean of the school. Duke (Martin Sheen) is Hugo’s father and the coach of the Hawks. Bob (John Heard) is Desi’s father and the dean of Palmetto Grove High School. Roger (Elden Henson) is Hugo’s best friend and has a crush on Desi. Michael (Andrew Keegan) is Odin’s best friend and starting guard on the team. Emily (Rain Phoenix) is Desi’s best friend and Hugo’s girlfriend. Brandy (Rachel Shumate) is Michael’s girlfriend. Shakespeare’s Othello, a classic tale of betrayal, jealousy, love, and racism is modernized in a high-school setting played out on a basketball court.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 1 ½ basketballs. 1 because it’s Shakespeare and ½ for the movie being “recommendable”.

Tournament seed: 10-12—movie is a sleeper, primed to upset a higher seed. Don’t be surprised if other people jump on the bandwagon when the brackets are released. It could play its way into the sweet 16.

I wish I had seen this movie when I was in high school. I never “got” Shakespeare: too many characters playing small parts all adding up at the end to a confusing mess. If I had seen it back then, it would have made Shakespeare easier to understand and me a lot cooler. The basketball scenes are pretty good, until Odin gets the ball and then everyone plays terribly and makes Odin look amazing. The music is all over the place: the movie opens/ends with opera, and jams in an assortment of rap in the middle. The movie starts with the confusion that made Shakespeare difficult for me in high school: Hugo is taking steroids (a storyline that never really goes anywhere); Odin and Desi have a weird conversation about the N-word and a naughty bedroom game (while lying in bed topless while Emily is in the bed next to them); Roger keeps allowing himself to be put in danger by Hugo (without getting any closer to Desi); Hugo steals the team’s mascot (it’s never explained what he intends to do with the hawk); there’s an extremely creepy scene involving Odin and Desi where sex turns into rape (I can’t even begin to describe it); Odin competes in a high school slam-dunk contest and breaks the backboard (the crowd loves it, but then he pushes some kid to the floor which the crowd doesn’t love so much); and then people just start dying. Somewhere in all this, the team is advancing in the playoffs, but we never find out if they win the state title. There is a really cool grainy video montage that sets up the climactic ending that looks like the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination. Hugo’s master plan is supposed to unfold like this from start to finish: tell Desi’s father that Odin raped Desi, have Roger fight Michael, get Michael close to Desi, convince Odin that Desi is cheating on him with Michael, get Emily to steal the scarf that Odin gave to Desi and give it to Hugo who will give it to Michael who will give it to Brandy, hope that Odin will want to kill Desi, and then set up a murder/suicide scene with the help of Roger to make it appear that Michael killed Desi and then himself. It all seems simple. How it actually plays out: Hugo hits Michael with a tire iron, Roger shoots Michael in the leg, Odin kills Desi, Hugo shoots Roger, Hugo shoots Emily, Odin shoots himself, and Hugo is arrested. So close!

The movie sticks pretty close to the Shakespeare play, and is enjoyable to watch, even though Julia Stiles is … well Julia Stiles. Josh Hartnett is pretty convincing and I loved his f-you attitude:

Hugo: “I rebound, I can shoot, I play guard, forward, power forward, you name the position, I fuckin’ play it.”