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Movies about sports are usually about the players and the competition; but Seven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird is about the real heroes of pro sports: The agents who get their clients such massive contracts. Read on to find out more about this interesting film…
HIGH FLYING BIRD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: High-powered agent Ray Burke (André Holland) represents young basketball players, often ones that are just coming into the unnamed pro league after the draft. His latest client is the number one pick in the draft, Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg), who is waiting for his big contract to kick in, but there’s one problem: The league has imposed a lockout and the negotiations with the players association have been unproductive. So Erick is in limbo; he’s signed his name to a pro contract, but the contract hasn’t been activated because of the labor situation. Erick even took out a high-interest loan to tide him over, which is where we find the two of them; Ray is ripping Erick a new one for doing that without letting him know.
But Ray gets an idea when he attends practice for a kids organization led by his old friend Coach Spence (Bill Duke); every year, a number of pros come to the coach’s street ball fundraiser, but because of the lockout, most are staying away because it could be construed as crossing the picket line. But since Erick isn’t technically a member of the PA yet, Ray figures he and others in Erick’s situation can participate. He’s especially keen on going around the system when his old friend Myra (Sonja Sohn), representing the PA, frustratedly tells Ray that the league won’t negotiate with her until they get new TV deals.
Ray cooks up a Twitter beef between Erick and another rookie, Jamero Umber (Justin Hurtt-Dunkley), who will be his teammate on the New York team when and if the lockout ends. Despite not working for Ray anymore, his former assistant Sam (Zazie Beetz) warily starts to buy into Ray’s scheme. She also likes Erick, so she helps him craft some of the combative tweets towards Umber, who is represented by his mother Emera (Jeryl Prescott). When Umber and his mother come to the street ball fundraiser, the two challenge each other to a one-on-one match, videos of which go viral, which gives Ray the impetus to execute his plan.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hoop Dreams crossed with Oceans’ 11. Director Steven Soderbergh even interviews three real NBA first-rounders — Karl-Anthony Towns, Donovan Mitchell and Reggie Jackson — about the perils of their first year in the pros.
Performance Worth Watching: Zazie Beetz steals every scene she’s in on FX’s Atlanta, so it’s no surprise that she’s riveting as Sam, whose ambition is pretty overt but who tries to get ahead with more kindness than cruelty. Her attraction to Erick seems genuine, as does her affection for Ray, who she keeps helping, despite the fact that she repeatedly reminds him that she no longer works for him.
Memorable Dialogue: Ray tells Coach Spence: “I just want to snatch the game out of their hands for a minute. I don’t need it; I just want to hold it just… for a second. So they know, like I know.” This is basically his scheme in a nutshell; he doesn’t want to take over the game, he wants to be the guy who brings everyone back to the table, and he wants everyone to know he did it.
Single Best Shot: Soderbergh shot this entire movie on an iPhone 8 with a wide-angle lens attachment, so there aren’t a ton of dynamic shots in High Flying Bird. But when Ray “runs into” league negotiator David Seton (Kyle MacLachlan) in a sauna, Seton says “I’m just here to clear my sinuses,” and he does just that.
Sex and Skin: Any sex in the movie, like between Sam and Erick, is implied.
Our Take: High Flying Bird takes a bit of time to get into. Not only does the screenplay by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight) takes its sweet time getting to the heart of what Ray wants to do to upend the system and gain a little bit of control, Soderbergh directs it at a bit of a distance, utilizing the wide angle iPhone attachment to put some distance between not only the viewer and the conversation but, in some scenes, between the actors as well. It’s a very talky movie, with conversation that’s so overlapping and mumbled that it feels improvised.
But as Ray’s plan slowly unfurls, we started to lean forward and follow things along better. The movie is especially compelling during the 72-hour period that he manages to change the tone of the negotiations between the PA and the league, simply because he found a loophole to exploit. Ray was pretty confident when his boss David Starr (Zachary Quinto) tries to fire him as the lockout drags on, but when he triumphantly returns to Starr’s office as the lockout ends and says, “you’re in my seat,” that moment of victory was well-earned. Holland plays Ray like the smart salesman he is, but he keeps Ray’s moral center intact.
This is the second movie Soderbergh has shot completely using iPhones — the first was Unsane — and he uses the more advanced cameras of today’s phones to his advantage; the only thing that may annoy a viewer is poor contrast in some scenes, but otherwise the film looks like it was made with much more expensive equipment.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Just realize that you may not really get into High Flying Bird until about halfway through its 90-minute runtime. But the payoff is worth the wait.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
