By: Andrew Wing

Hustle is a 2022 American sports drama film directed by Jeremiah Zagar (directed We the Animals back in 2018), from a screenplay by Taylor Materne and Will Fetters. The film stars Adam Sandler (Happy Gilmore, Uncut Gems) as an NBA scout who discovers a raw but talented player (Juancho Hernangómez) in Spain and tries to prepare him for the NBA draft.

Current Minnesota Timberwolves player Anthony Edwards plays the main antagonist, Kermit Wilts in the film, while Queen Latifah (Beauty Shop, Girls Trip), Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, Leave No Trace), Robert Duvall (The Godfather, Kicking and Screaming), and Heidi Gardner (Saturday Night Live) also star. Icon and NBA superstar LeBron James acts as a producer through his SpringHill Company banner for the film as well.

Hustle was released by Netflix on June 8, 2022.

THE GOOD

For those who don’t know me, I am a huge basketball fan. I played all the way up throughout high school and I even coached a middle school basketball team at my former middle school this past winter, so when I saw there would be a sports drama film revolving around my favorite sport of basketball, I knew I couldn’t miss it! More than that, once I saw the trailer for Hustle and saw that not only one of my favorite actors Adam Sandler was leading the way, but that Juancho Hernangómez, a real NBA basketball player who played on my favorite sports team, the Boston Celtics, for a little bit last year, was starring alongside Sandler, I was so pumped for this! However, as much as I love Sandler, he has been in some pretty bad movies in the past ten years and there have also been some brutal sports drama films in the past decade, none worse than Draft Day, so I was still skeptical about it. So was it another garbage sports movie, or was it one of the better ones? Keep reading to find out!

It was the latter! Just like a film I recently reviewed in Chip‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (see my full review here), you can go right ahead and chalk this one up as one of the biggest surprises of the year. This movie was just a good time from start to finish. Now like I previously mentioned, there have been some bad sports dramas in the past few years and despite my love for both sports and movies, I really am not the biggest sports movies guy just because of how many bad ones there have been. But this one was absolutely not that. It really was one of the better sports movies, and honestly one of the best basketball sports movies, and a big reason why is because this is first and foremost a character drama focused around Adam Sandler’s character, Stanley Sugerman, a scout and coach for the Philadelphia 76ers.

It’s rare to see a sports movie that doesn’t revolve around someone that wasn’t either a player or a head coach, but what they did worked here and that’s mainly because of the performance we got from the Sandman himself, Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler truly is unlike any other actor. The man is definitely known for his comedy because he has been cracking us up for nearly thirty years, but he has also proven time and time again that he can be a great, and I mean great dramatic actor too. You don’t believe me? Just go watch Punch-Drunk Love, The Meyerowitz Stories, and Uncut Gems. And even if you don’t take my advice and go watch those, you will believe me after watching this because he has done it again. Don’t get me wrong, he has a lot of funny moments, but he just killed it here in all of the dramatic moments. I would love to see him in either Grown Ups 3 or Hubie Halloween 2 because I’ll eat that slop up, but I really would encourage him to keep taking roles like these so he can continue to shut the haters up by showing what he is really capable of. I’ll stop there, but I just gotta say this in case he reads this, I love you, Adam Sandler, you are the man!

As good as Sandler’s performance was, and there is no denying that he carried this film, current Minnesota Timberwolves player Anthony Edwards who plays the main antagonist, Kermit Wilts in the film, was freaking awesome in his first film role. Ever since Edwards got drafted into the NBA a few years ago as the top pick, not only has he got buckets, but he has shown in his media availability that he has an amazing personality and a hilarious sense of humor, so it makes sense that he was good in this. But still, the fact that he played this villain role as good as he did is unfathomable, and I might get some heat for this take, but he reminded me a lot of the Apollo Creed character in Rocky. For real though, his character was a complete a**hole and I hated him and it was because of how well he played this part.

Aside from the performances, Hustle had great writing from Taylor Materne and Will Fetters, and directing from Jeremiah Zagar. It takes a lot to make a sports drama film nowadays feel unique and all of those guys somehow did it. How? I’ll tell you. This movie really stood out to me because of its emotion, its characters, and just all of its dramatic elements. Those in charge just did a really good job at connecting with the audience and making you care about the characters and what was going on in the film. I genuinely cared about the main characters and this movie touched me emotionally. Seriously though, it almost had me tearing up at one point. I could go on, but I was just locked in from the start when it came to Hustle and that is all a credit to those that put it together.

As for some of the other small things that I liked about Hustle, I quickly get to touch on some of the other performances. It was great to see Robert Duvall in his small role because well, it’s Robert Duvall. I also really liked Queen Latifah in her role as Sandler’s character’s wife. I was also blown away by the kid performance we got from Jordan Hull as Alex, Stanley’s daughter. And if you know me, you knew this was coming, but I loved Ben Foster’s role in this too. Similar to Edwards’ character, Foster played just an absolute scumbag that you hated so much and that is all thanks to Foster’s acting chops. Lastly, the film was edited very nicely, especially all of the basketball scenes which is usually not the case when it comes to sports films. But it worked here because they got real basketball players and taught them how to act rather than doing the opposite.

THE BAD

Nobody can say this is a bad movie. Nobody. There is just too much to like here for anybody to hate on it. However, despite how much I enjoyed this movie, it still had an abundance of sports movies cliches, an unnecessary amount of inspirational quotes, montages that run way too long, and just a level of predictability that we have come to expect from all sports movies. That just comes with the territory at this point, but it really didn’t take away from the overall product too much.

One more small critique and I know I brought up how good Anthony Edwards was in his first film role, the same could not be said for all of the real NBA players we got in this, unfortunately. Juancho Hernangómez was fine, but some of the other smaller cameos were just bad. Call me biased here because as I already mentioned, I am a diehard Celtics fan, but all the performances we got from the real 76ers players didn’t do much and what f**k was Kyle Lowry doing in this? The dude literally said one word and I just rolled my eyes when I saw him on screen, but my hatred for Kyle Lowry (the basketball player) is a story for another day.

THE VERDICT

In what is Adam Sandler’s love letter to the game of basketball, Hustle is easily one of the better sports dramas of the past decade and it is just the feel-good film of all feel-good films. Sandler gave us yet another great dramatic performance and he continues to show that he should be taken seriously as a dramatic actor. Other than that, the LeBron James-produced film was unique and extremely emotional, and it also featured a fantastic performance from NBA player Anthony Edwards as the film’s antagonist.

If you are a basketball fan like me, you just need to watch this movie. It caters to fans as it has some fantastic nods to the NBA and the basketball world as a whole with awesome cameos from NBA players and reporters. Overall, this movie works and it is no doubt one of the surprises of the year!