Netflix film “Rez Ball”, which was released on Netflix a few weeks ago, is a typical basketball movie with some specific elements to observe and appreciate. Needless to say, this is basically your average underdog sports film which will remind you of many other seniors such as, yes, “Hoosiers” (1986), but it is equipped with an interesting story background which brings some local personality to its earnest narrative, and the result is a fairly solid genre product on the whole.

The story, which is mainly set in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, US, begins with how a local high school basketball team and their coach try to begin another reason. Their star player, Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind), has just returned not long after losing his two family members due to a very unfortunate accident, but their coach, a former female basketball player named Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten), is ready to try her best, and so do many of her team players including Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt).

However, of course, things do not look that promising right from their first game of the season. Although they win in the end, Hobbs are not so satisfied with how her team players played, and we also come to see that Jackson has not fully recovered from the grief and depression caused by the death of his two family members. This eventually leads to a devastating incident which struck hard many others around him, and many people come to have more doubt on whether the team can actually go on during the rest of the season.

Nevertheless, Hobbs does not give up at all as a good coach who cares a lot about her team players. Although it seems that her coaching career has no future despite her several job applications here and there in the country, she is not daunted by this at all, and she soon embarks on how to boost the ability of her team more than before. At one point in the film, she takes the team to a sheep ranch belonging to her grandmother, and her team players come to have some lesson on strategy and comradeship as they try to find and then lead a group of sheep back to the ranch.

As the team players become more focused under Hobbs’ guidance, they come to find their new center from Holiday, who comes to show more leadership around his colleagues despite his initial reluctance. While still struggling with what happened to his close friend, Holiday also has to deal with his alcoholic single mother as usual, and we see how Hobbs is more like a parent to him at times.

While going through one expected moment to another, the screenplay by director Sydney Freeland, who previously directed Netflix film “Deidra & Laney Rob a Train” (2017), and her co-writer Sterlin Harjo, which is based on the nonfiction sports novel “Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation” written by The New York Times journalist Michael Powell, sometimes pays attention to how things are usually gloomy for many people in the Navajo Nation. Young people like Holiday are certainly eager to get out of their area for a better life and future, but there are not many options for them from the beginning. Not so surprisingly, as mentioned in the film, the Navajo Nation has had a serious problem of depression, alcoholism, and suicide just like many other Native American reservation areas in US.

Holiday’s mother is one of such a sad, pathetic case. She was once a promising female basketball player when she played along with Hobbs a long time ago, but she has been going down and down with her alcoholism to her son’s frustration. In addition, she does not think her son will succeed as much as she could have during that time, and that surely puts more distance between them before she eventually comes to the point where most of alcoholics feel the need to turn around from their destructive lifestyle.

It goes without saying that the mood becomes more uplifting as Holiday and his team members excel themselves during a series of successful games. While pretty predictable at times, the basketball game scenes are as competent as they can be at least, and Kauchani Bratt and a bunch of other actors including Kusem Goodwind are convincing during these scenes in addition to bringing some extra spirit and personality to the story.

Without overshadowing Bratt and other actors at all, Jessica Matten steadily holds the ground for them, and I like how she earnestly handles her several locker room scenes. Hobbs does not make any rousing speech at all, but she shows common sense and dedication for her team players, and that is what any good coach is required to do. As Holiday’s struggling alcoholic mother, Julia Jones is rather under-utilized, but she manages to fill her role with enough sense of life, and she is poignant when her character finally makes some real connection with Holiday around the end of the story.

In conclusion, “Rez Ball” may not bring anything particularly new to its genre territory, but it is engaging enough to hold our attention thanks to its good direction and sincere storytelling, and you may want to learn more about its main subject after watching it. Yes, I saw through its playbook from the beginning, but it still plays the ball mostly well on the whole, so I will not grumble for now.