Right now Dwayne Johnson is one of the stars that best represents the convulsive state that modern movie stars live in. His ambition, of course, goes beyond cinema, he wants to establish an omnipresent global brand. Thus, your image is as smooth as possiblechoosing fairly white films and roles that differ with risks taken in the past (there’s no way he would do something like ‘Southland Tales’ now).
Even a movie like ‘Black Adam’, with a character defined as being a villain/anti-hero and sold as especially extreme and violent, ends up devoid of controversial aspects so that it doesn’t seem like anything other than Dwayne Johnson. And the curious thing is that it wasn’t that long ago that he was able to risk it a little more and offer something with a little more complexity and interest. This is the case of one of his best projects, the ‘Ballers’ series.
The ball is in your court
On HBO Max you can find this peculiar sports drama, produced by HBO itself as full confidence to the producers of ‘Entourage: The Entourage’, a series with which many comparisons can be made in tone and style. Peter Berg and Johnson are among the producers of this Interesting look into the guts of the American sports industry.
La Roca plays an ex-soccer player who does the transition to sports agent, still maintaining ties to the NFL and professional football. He’ll try to function in an agency with another top-tier agent (Troy Garity) and a financial advisor (Rob Corddry), and we’ll also follow another retired athlete (Donovan W. Carter) searching for a new purpose, as well as another active footballer ( John David Washington) who is a loose cannon.
Without being particularly scathing, since it opts for a light format with 30 minutes per episode and a casual and “scoundrel” tone at times, ‘Ballers’ turns out to be entertaining but also interesting for how it puts its finger on the sore spot in some problems of professional sport. Especially when it comes to football, with non-star athletes looking for a place to settle, problems with injuries (especially concussions), and later life that ends up revealing stages of pain and addictions.
‘Ballers’: quirky and forceful
The character of La Roca is essential for the moments where he decides to become more dramatic and forceful to land. Johnson gets a good job out of himself to make the contradictions and complexities of a character that drags failureswho ends up going to dark places.
But he also knows how to take advantage of his personal charisma so that the protagonist is not completely oblivious to the rest of the series and can also be fun. The series also puts us in some excesses, in bizarre moments that are plausible in the world of elite sports.
Without needing to go to extremes of greatness, ‘Ballers’ is a series that is well measured and aware of what it is looking for, that entertains and sometimes tries to add some nuance or point out problems at the industry level so as not to fall into monotony. It is of the best that Johnson has done in all facetsas a performer and as a creative.
In Espinof | best sports movies