In case you are confused by a title like Rez Ball (2024), the two words are abbreviations.  The second is basketball.  The first is reservation, as in the land set aside by the United States government for native peoples, which is a laugh when you think about the history, but that is another story.  Despite teaching Native American History for ten years, I promise to not take too much time on that subject.  Nor will I dwell long on the role of the Church is this matter.  Suffice to say, it is not as bad as people think, but neither is it without its flaws.  Even the Church would admit to that fact, and has on a number of occasions.  I touch on these terms simply to do what any introduction is meant to do: give you a sense of what is to follow without completely spelling it out.  It is important to have these contexts in mind as you read the rest, though it does not tell the whole story.

The story of Rez Ball begins with two young boys playing basketball.  They are cheered on by Nizhoni (Nellie Silentwalker) and Ronald Jackson (Ryan Begay).  We then fast forward to the now teenage boys, Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt) and Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind), being told by Ronald to stop playing and catch their school bus.  While their classmates joke, Nataanii is aloof, seeing a roadside marker along their route.  He is saddened by what was missing from his dad telling them to get a move on: his mom and little sister, who had died a year earlier.  He keeps it together for now because Chuska High School’s first varsity basketball game is that night.  They are the biggest draw on the reservation, and they are expected to compete for a state championship, with Jimmy and Nataanii leading the way.  After their win, Nataanii is asked on the court whether he felt the presence of his mother and sister courtside, and he is speechless.  His best friend, Jimmy, steps in to answer for Nataanii.  Later, they are hanging out at their favorite spot overlooking Chuska and Nataanii asks if his friend has ever thought about “leaving it all behind.”  Jimmy presumes Nataanii means the reservation, but Nataanii is insistent that he means “everything.”  The matter is dropped for the time being.  In the meantime, Jimmy comes home to his alcoholic mother, Gloria Holiday (Julia Jones), who does everything she can to remind her son how hard life is for the Navajo.  She also never attends his games.  Their coach, former Women’s National Basketball Association player Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten), is also hard on her players.  Following the game, she had expressed dissatisfaction with their margin of victory and reminded them of their expectations.  The next evening there is another contest, and while cajoling her kids to a better performance, she notes that Nataanii is not present.  The fact that they are missing one of their star players is bad enough, but this night they are going against the best team in the state and their main competition for the title, Santa Fe Catholic.  Nataanii never shows and neither is Chuska competitive.  The worst comes in the closing seconds.  With Jimmy shooting free throws, police enter the gym and report that Nataanii has committed suicide.  Everyone is saddened and shocked, but Jimmy takes it the hardest.  Coach Hobbs attempts to re-focus Jimmy by naming him captain, but the team proceeds to go on a nine-game losing streak.  As happens so often in these kinds of movies, it is evident they are not playing together, with Jimmy alienating everyone else.  While local media begins calling for Coach Hobbs’ resignation, she changes her approach to the team.  Her first move is to bring back her former coach from when she played for Chuska, Benny Begay (Ernest Tsosie III).  He comes in to remind these teenage boys who they are and what they represent.  Along those same lines, Coach Hobbs has another team building exercise in mind for them.  She takes her boys to her grandmother’s sheep farm to help her retrieve her stock that had broken free of their pen.  At first, Jimmy is not interested in participating, particularly when he does not understand the assignment since it was spoken in Navajo, which he has yet to understand.  Yet, soon his leadership abilities emerge and he devises a plan for everyone to work in unison to corral the animals.  The process inspires him to learn his native language, and to use it to call out plays while on the court.  It also involves implementing the eponymous style of play, which is fast-paced, getting the ball into the offensive zone quickly and taking a shot within seven seconds. With it, the team begins winning.  As for Gloria, she, too, makes changes for the better.  She starts going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings with Ronald, who also gives her a job, and eventually a car.  Inevitably, it comes down to the state championship, and the final game between Chuska and Santa Fe Catholic.  Gloria tries to attend, but because of her past driving under the influence (DUI) violations, she is arrested outside the stadium owing to the barely functioning vehicle attracting the attention of the police.  While in holding, she asks if she can listen to the game, but is only able to get the last minute of the proceedings.  She is within earshot of a radio for the closing action when Jimmy is fouled taking a shot and put on the free throw line down a point.  He makes two and Chuska wins.  The final scene sees mother and son reunited in front of their house, shooting hoops.

This last scene in Rez Ball is meant as a sweet bonding moment displaying a healed relationship.  Gloria had also played basketball in high school, and had been quite good.  According to Coach Hobbs, Gloria had been the one scouts had come to see.  It was the only way Coach Hobbs had been noticed.  What it speaks to is tradition, and that is a word with which us Catholics are quite comfortable.  In the film, the team is lost until they return to their Navajo roots.  A lot of people say that the Church is too fixed on ways of doing things that go back centuries, forgetting the fact they are Christian beliefs established as close to the time of Jesus as one can get.  Whether you want to accept that historical reality, they provide a bedrock of Faith that can be relied upon in times of uncertainty.  This aligns with what is said in the movie.  Given the way Chuska’s season had not lived up to expectations, nobody thinks that things will work out as they hope.  It is Coach Begay that reminds them otherwise, and his message has some further alignments with Faith.  One of the things he talks about is diminishing the individual.  It is not about what a single person wants, but how they fit with the rest.  Coach Hobbs reinforces this when she tells Jimmy separately that a great player makes other people better.  Faith is not something that is possible to be practiced in a vacuum.  Like being on a basketball team, our payers are for the building up of the body of Christ.  Even if you think your entreaties with God are focused solely on yourself, doing so improves your relationship with God.  By reflection, that will help others because God calls on us to put others before ourselves.  One way of putting it is to help ourselves before we can help others, and there is wisdom in that statement.  A selfish, wounded person is of little use to anyone, especially themselves.  The film bears out these truths.

There is a lot of truth in general in Rez Ball.  I would say that my only criticism is that I do not approve of some of the behaviors you see in it, but that is arguably unfair.  The quality of life on reservations is not the best, to say the least, and the film does not hide this fact.  As such, it is an important movie to watch on many levels, and it gets my recommendation.