The Keanu Reeves Project - Hardball

HARDBALL (2001) - Conor O'Neill

As always, full spoilers ahead.

I can't remember exactly what movie it was, but I do remember seeing a trailer for the 2001 movie "Hardball" and thinking to myself, "This looks terrible."

And while not entirely awful, "Hardball," apparently based on a true story, is more mediocre fare which also happened to be released the weekend following 9/11.  I can't even imagine the mental state of anyone who actually went to see this movie in the theater that weekend.

"Hey, you know what will distract me from the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor?  Going to see a shitty movie about Keanu Reeves teaching a bunch of 10 year old kids from inner city Chicago how to play baseball!"

So what the fuck is this movie?

Keanu Reeves plays Conor (one 'N') O'Neill, a down-on-his-luck sports better and ticket scalper, who, when the movie begins, apparently owes a bunch of money to a couple of bookies in and around Chicago.  And for WHATEVER REASON, one of the bookies happens to run a bar that Conor likes to hang out at, despite the fact that he owes this man thousands of dollars.  Needless to say, this particular bookie doesn't love that a deadbeat gambler keeps showing up at his bar without the money he supposedly owes.

Throughout the movie, we see Conor make a handful of bets which happen to ALWAYS be on Chicago Bulls games because apparently he has zero creativity and can't look beyond one sport in the city he happens to live in.  But placing bets on the 2000/2001 Bulls?  These guys?

Notably missing: any good players

At one point in the movie he takes the Bulls +6 over the Miami Heat.  For both of my readers of this blog, neither of whom probably have much in the way of basketball knowledge from the 2000 - 2001 NBA Season, the bulls starting lineup consisted of:

Ron Artest, Elton Brand, Ron Mercer, Michael Ruffin and Khalid El-Amin.  This is not a good lineup.  For fuck's sake, Fred Fucking Hoiberg started 37 games for this team!  

Superstar Fred Hoiberg

This guy both looks and sounds like someone who should be doing my taxes, not starting for a professional basketball team.

The Bulls were notoriously bad the first few years following Michael Jordan's departure, and in 2001 had a record of of 15-67.  If you are not a sports fan I'll just let you know that's NOT good.

Meanwhile, the Miami Heat went 50-32 that season, and also happened to DESTROY the Bulls in the four games they played.

My point is, Keanu Reeves is such a shitty fucking gambler in this movie that he bets money on the Bulls to win a game over the Heat, and even getting six points is nowhere near enough for this to make any sense.  No wonder he's in so much debt.

I'm sorry, I appear to have gotten a little sidetracked.

Anyway, Conor has a friend that works at a big investment bank (or something), who he tries to borrow money from in order to pay off his debts and not get killed.  However, instead of giving Conor money, his buddy gives him a job for $500 a week coaching a little league baseball team because sure, that makes sense.

I am your baseball league coach!

At no point do we the audience know if Conor knows the first thing about baseball, what qualifies him to be a coach, or what the point of any of this is.  He owes bookies something like $20,000 and he's only making $500 a week, so even if he uses ALL of his money to pay off his debts he still needs to coach for nearly a year.  Not to mention that the guy has, you know, living expenses.

Lucky for him though, that bet I mentioned earlier actually pays off about halfway through the movie so we don't really have to worry about any of this.

Like any sports movie featuring children, you can probably guess the entire story.  Conor comes in and the team is TERRIBLE, but guess what?  By the end, they're really good and even win the championship!  Hooray!

There are a handful of subplots that nobody cares about (except for one which I'll get to momentarily) including: the rough life in the inner city for these kids, Michael B. Jordan (in his film debut) having to leave the team because he's too old so he joins a gang (never to be seen from again in this) and what I assume is supposed to be a romantic subplot featuring the incomparable Diane Lane which is completely pointless and goes absolutely nowhere.

I'm just here for the paycheck

But the absolute worst part of this movie, is that after 90 minutes of nonsense, this movie has the goddamn nerve to kill an 8 year old kid by a stray bullet and try to get me to cry when Keanu Reeves gives a eulogy at his funeral.  HOW DARE this movie toss this in at the very end to attempt to turn a light drama into a pathetic tearjerker.  Fuck you, "Hardball."  

G-Baby, moments away from being shot in the chest

I cannot express how angry this made me.  The entire movie borders on attempting to say something meaningful about these kids lives and the difficulties of growing up in the projects, and leaves us with this kid getting shot and killed.  FUCK YOU, "HARDBALL."

Some stray thoughts:

*One of the bookies that Conor owes money to is just called "The Barber," which doesn't sound nearly as menacing as they make him out to be.  When I hear "The Barber" all I can think of is this guy.

Terrifying

*I touched on it a bit above, but Diane Lane is astonishingly wasted in this movie and she's the first female lead to perform in this series that I can think of who has ZERO chemistry with Keanu.

*Aww, just look at this guy!

WHERE'S WALLACE?

BEST PART: Early in the film, instead of getting his ass kicked by his bookie, Conor decides to beat himself up and throws his head through a window.  It's sort of hilarious and probably should have killed him.

WORST PART: The completely unnecessary murder of G-Baby and this movie trying to get me to cry.  FUCK YOU, "HARDBALL."

BONUS WORST PART: Keanu dancing to "Big Poppa" by Notorious BIG.  Unfortunately, the only clip I can find of this online appears to be in Russian, but check it out anyway.  It's...depressing.

BONUS WORST PART 2: Conor O'Neill?  Is Keanu supposed to be Irish?  What the fuck?

Box Office Information: $40 Million Domestic/$3 Million International for $43 Million Worldwide ($64 Million domestic inflation adjusted) on a $21 Million budget.  This is actually fairly impressive for it being released on what ended up being one of the worst weekends to open a movie, ever.

Rotten Tomatoes: 41% Critics/70% Audience.  Sure.

IMDB: 6.4

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Completely forgettable yet irredeemable for the last ten minutes.

Keanu Rating: 5/10.  I don't know, he's not good, he's not bad, but he is definitely the world's worst gambler.

Up Next: Well, it's time for "The Matrix" sequels, filmed together but released six months apart, I never actually saw these movies for a reason I'll explain in the next post.