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The Basketball Diaries

Jim Carroll: First, it's a Saturday night thing when you feel cool like a gangster or a rockstar- just something to kill the boredom, you know? They call it a chipie, a small habbit. It feels so good, you start doing it on Tuesdays... then Thursdays... then it's got you. Every wise ass punk on the block says it won't happen to them, but it does.

Jim Carroll: Leonardo Dicaprio
Jims Ma: Lorraine Braco
Swifty: Bruno Kirby
Bobby: Michael Imperioli
Mickey: Mark Wahlberg


Jim Carroll is a young upstart basketball player in high school. He and his buddies are trouble makers off the court, but when the on the court the dominate the game like no others. They go out at nights, pick fights, Jim writes his journals and they go to school. They dont like it, most people dont like school. Jim, Mickey and the others go to a catholic school in New York City where sins are punishable by violence. Jim and his friends get stoned on occasion, but Basketball comes first. Until one night Jim and Mickey try Cocaine, they are forever changed. They begin picking fights more often, getting high before playing a game of basketball and then they get into even harder drugs, heroine, crack, once and while even popping pills. Jim and his friends get out of control and they are on the fast track to prison or maybe something worse.

Jim:your nose is running.. your legs are cramped… but theres always a voice in the back of your head saying just one more time and then ill quit.

Jim Carroll struggled to find himself as a basketball player, couldn’t find himself as a person, he began writing out his feelings but didn’t believe in them. His friends believed in drugs and substances to help get you through the day. Jim adopted that belief and he becomes something that keeps him from living his dream. Jim turns to harder and harder drugs to lift his spirits, but the damage is done when you come down from that high of all highs. Jim Carroll is kicked out of the home he knows and left to fight with the streets of a city he cannot beat. A movie give a terrible name to drugs is often a set of emotions that most average joes don’t know how to deal with. It is complicated and immensely hard to make people understand how these people encounter everyday life. We get even more upset at the notion that a Hollywood film is trying to depict something that a lot people think cannot be depicted on the big screen. This film is different. From the beginning it is set as a dark drama about a city street boy, none of the Hollywood glamour. Apart from Dicaprio and Wahlberg none of the names in this film are big time house hold names.

Diacprio is the bright star in this film. Dicaprio bestows upon the world of movie goers a good young kid who gets involved with the wrong crowd. Dicaprio shows the ins and outs of Jim Carrolls seventeen year old world. Dicaprio himself was 21 at the time, coming into the lime light with his big-time steal in Whats Eating Gilbert Grape. Dicaprio was young, upstart and ready to take on the challenge. He takes the challenge and he delivers what after watching many of films before and after could stand as one of his most difficult and troubling performances. This is onw where he needed to find it with himself to be exceptional. He needed the audience to see Jim Carroll as we has, troubled, paining, in need of help. Jim Carroll was in dire need of some help, but he just wouldnt reach out and take it. He was in to deep and had no one willing to help him cope with his struggles. He needed the tough love he got, but would Jim Carroll get it before the time on the clock expired. Diacprio is fresh, he was young, his acting skills were fine tuned and he didn’t disappoint. Giving a film that plays at your heart strings.

Jim:If your gonna sniff,might as well pop it,and if you’re gonna pop it might as well mainline. I’m scared of needles but i gave in. It was like a long heat wave through my body, any ache or pain or sadness or guilty feeling was completely flushed out.

This film plays out and it makes you think about your own choices, and whether or not they are only affecting you as a person. When someone gets to the point of Jim Carroll did they are hurting more than just themselves. They hurt those who cared, those who have watched you grow up.




7/10
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Added by kgbelliveau
14 years ago on 1 February 2010 16:15

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