High Flying Bird

Soderberg's latest experimentation with the iPhone focuses on a struggling idealistic player agent during an NBA "lockout". You may wonder how so small a camera manages to capture or at least replicate the drama of fast-paced sporting action, particularly the pinnacle grandstand moment of that ole rags to riches sports tale. Without spoiling anything, let me tell you it doesn't. Or more to the point, High Flying Bird is less concerned with the sport of basketball itself than it is with "The game on top of the game".

Instead of an arena, the game is played out in offices and instead of action, there is dialogue. Considering the constrained budget and production schedule, it is a testament to the cast and to the screenplay that the film holds together at all. And yet it does. The performances are naturalistic while the story moves along at pace, generally eschewing exposition.

In keeping its focus narrow, centring on a small cast of characters, Tyrell Alvin McCraney's screenplay cuts to the core of issues of race and power in the NBA without a whisper of melodrama. In fact, considering the wider story it is telling High Flying Bird remains upbeat and inherently promotes a message of positivity.

High Flying Bird will not be for everyone, it could be accused of being a little dry. However it is an intriguing experiment in film-making which finds a new way to tell a story which needs telling.

There are obviously parts and scenes where you can see Steven Soderberghs technical virtuosity, the stale camera angles, or the slowly moving wide shots. It feels like a very professional movie, ironically shot on an iPhone. The acting itself also is quite convincing.

But I could not get anything out of this movie. It's a movie about basketball, that has no basketball in it. It has an idea but it does not have characters. You don't care about the characters because they simply aren't engaging. They don't have organic character arcs, or come to a satisfying conclusion. The script is fine, but mostly doesn't help the movie become compelling or interesting in any way. It just.. moves along.

There is one main message. Basketball leagues are controlled by white capitalists, although black people are the main players. The idea behind "beating" this game over the game may be interesting in itself. I left this movie with nothing, except the feeling of having seen some clever shots and some politics. But it should have been more of a documentary instead of a 90-minute drama.

Netflix movies are continuing to disappoint.

Not a sports movie, not a basketball movie, and it was boring and nothing actually happened to all characters in the movie. just a guy with smart thinking tried to end the NBA lockout ... OK but why should this be a movie? and why it has so high rating i cannot understand...

Lots of dull opaque talking in "High Flying Bird" to ultimately turn contract negotiations between millionaires and billionaires--not exactly "Norma Rae" (1979) this, let alone worthy of all the salvery references--into Steven Soderbergh's favorite genre, the con or heist flick, which in this case mostly boils down to a character revealing and reveling in how much smarter he is than are others and some message that pertains to a very select number of people, the professional black athlete. Documentary interviews with NBA players interrupt the drama, too, to lend advice to rookie basketballers. Makes me wonder why this is streaming on Netflix and not exclusively at NBA Orientation Days. For whom is this movie supposed to be?

For director Soderbergh himself, perhaps. He's one of the brightest at exploiting the fundamental importance of the cinematographic apparatus within his oeuvre--even being his own cinematographer, editor and so on. His breakthrough film, after all, listed a medium of motion pictures in its title, "Sex, Lies and Videotape" (1989). If anyone is going to make movies with a phone camera that are indirectly about making movies with a phone camera, it'd be him. I haven't seen "Unsane" (2018) yet, being generally not in a rush to see movies shot with an iPhone, but I have seen his latest phone heist of some of Hollywood's top actors, "No Sudden Move" (2021). There, the camera was fit with a distorting wide-angle lens that reflected visually the narrative involving automobiles--and did so by way of the reflective device in cars, the rear-view mirror. It may also allude to the past obfuscation involved in the genre plotting and its historical setting.

It follows, then, that Soderbergh may've shot "High Flying Bird" as a comment on another industry, that of making movies. Nominally, the narrative concerns undermining NBA owners by way of new technology and forms of communication to bring basketball to its fans and, thus, wrestle away control for the players, or their agents. Congruous for an independent movie shot with a mobile phone and released on Netflix, if not for the racial issues it raises as written by Tarell Alvin McCraney (also of "Moonlight" (2016)). He doesn't even show us the film-within-the-film, the one-on-one basketball game, because this isn't about a movie, or the story in it, but about how movies are made. The suggestion is that Soderbergh is changing the way the game, or rather the game on top of the game, is played.

He may be right. The anti-studio, anti-actual-film progenitor of a new era of independent and digital cinema has been before. Hopefully, at least, these phone movies will become better looking--that Soderbergh will not overlook keeping a shaky shot from the table that apparently holds the phone stand being bumped, or a distracting and odd-looking lens flare in another, and get better lenses in general. Everything is in focus in these shots, which is distracting, as anything and nothing consequently become the focus. As if the drama for millionaires weren't already irrelevant enough, too. And, I like meta movies generally, but this one seems overly self-satisfied looking in the mirror--the cinematic equivalent of a selfie.

Jerry Maguire he isn't ... but if you were to mix that movie with a basketball inspired theme (lockout), this might be the thing you get. There are many interesting insights in between - which is weird to say. Because while this is a fictional movie based on real events, the sporadic interviews with real rookies/NBA players in itself are quite something.

They work fine, but they also might get you out of the movie. The charisma of the actors on the other hand is not at fault here. The main character, no matter how shady he may seem, is quite charismatic. The twists and turns are nice, but they don't have the power behind them you might wish for .. even when you feel they should feel important