So I had heard good things about this movie. It certainly does a good job depicting how ugly life can be. It is very dark. Leonardo DiCaprio did a good job in this film, but does much better in other works (just about everything else he has ever been in). The scene where he asks his mother for money and cries outside of her door should have been more violent. Maybe his character didn't have any more strength to act more violently, but the movie had me suspend disbelief willingly up until that point. The movie doesn't glorify drugs or violence and I didn't find it at all unrealistic until that scene outside of his mother's door. I expected Jim to be considerably more violent and desperate, but instead he just kind of paws at the door and at his mother and then whimpers and cries on the steps outside her door (oh he half heartedly yells out a few times but where is that desperate strength, that animal rage that should have been there?). And then at the end - Jim is redeemed so quickly - how and why? What does he have to live for? Why does he cleanup in jail? What is his life about after the drugs? Telling and retelling his horrific "drughead" days? That's not redemption. I did not find this movie to be as good as I was lead to believe it was going to be.
Review of The Basketball Diaries
