I was so looking forward to this because I've watched The Last Dance so many times. I'm not a huge basketball fan admittedly - but the telling of the Bulls story and the whole Michael Jordan biography is absolutely compelling. When the same guys came out with this and were touting LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade - plus the trailers - I mean I was salivating... The risk with these things is that it can be over-hyped quite easily.
With a documentary film like this you have you recognise that there are certain narrative features that you cannot ignore or neglect. This cannot be a story that basically says "We were the greatest basketball team in Olympic history - we took our eye off it, took our foot off the pedal, looked the other way, and someone stole it out from under us unexpectedly. So we focused, paid more attention and won it back. That's the story."
That story doesn't really light you up does it? Sadly - that is the actual story. Man for man the NBA has always produced the heavy guns and no matter what the documentary suggests about one or two countries having a couple of NBA players - nobody was taking hall of fame, NBA MVPs, front to back, to the Olympics. The competition - if the USA team was paying attention - was never that great. So the USA paid attention, they didn't really do anything tactically that special, they motivated their guys and they rolled up with LeBron, with Kobe and with D Wade (and others) and the inevitable happened (spoiler - they won the gold medal).
The efforts to suggest that the final was close or got nervous are pretty thin. The USA led from the beginning and played it out. It wasn't a buzzer game.
In the meanwhile you are hoping that behind the scenes you're going to find something new out, see something happen in training that you didn't know about, catch a brilliant anecdote... something? Nah. It doesn't come through. The stories are pretty tame.
The documentary really tries to make this look like much more of an achievement than it really was - and in fact one commentator (American, naturally) even tried to suggest that this was 'the greatest team in the history of Olympic sport' (for what they achieved and what they over came). Nah. Don't get carried away.
So it's interesting - probably wouldn't watch it more than once - will definitely interest an NBA fan specifically - but overall it's really not the story that they're trying to turn it into. Watch it - by all means - it is watchable and the production values are great - but don't expect a feature length version of 'The Last Dance'.
With a documentary film like this you have you recognise that there are certain narrative features that you cannot ignore or neglect. This cannot be a story that basically says "We were the greatest basketball team in Olympic history - we took our eye off it, took our foot off the pedal, looked the other way, and someone stole it out from under us unexpectedly. So we focused, paid more attention and won it back. That's the story."
That story doesn't really light you up does it? Sadly - that is the actual story. Man for man the NBA has always produced the heavy guns and no matter what the documentary suggests about one or two countries having a couple of NBA players - nobody was taking hall of fame, NBA MVPs, front to back, to the Olympics. The competition - if the USA team was paying attention - was never that great. So the USA paid attention, they didn't really do anything tactically that special, they motivated their guys and they rolled up with LeBron, with Kobe and with D Wade (and others) and the inevitable happened (spoiler - they won the gold medal).
The efforts to suggest that the final was close or got nervous are pretty thin. The USA led from the beginning and played it out. It wasn't a buzzer game.
In the meanwhile you are hoping that behind the scenes you're going to find something new out, see something happen in training that you didn't know about, catch a brilliant anecdote... something? Nah. It doesn't come through. The stories are pretty tame.
The documentary really tries to make this look like much more of an achievement than it really was - and in fact one commentator (American, naturally) even tried to suggest that this was 'the greatest team in the history of Olympic sport' (for what they achieved and what they over came). Nah. Don't get carried away.
So it's interesting - probably wouldn't watch it more than once - will definitely interest an NBA fan specifically - but overall it's really not the story that they're trying to turn it into. Watch it - by all means - it is watchable and the production values are great - but don't expect a feature length version of 'The Last Dance'.