Summary:
The film The Hill, a new sports biopic, lacks the depth needed to truly sell the inspiring story of minor league baseball player Rickey Hill. The film’s heavy religious message conflicts with Rickey’s journey, leaving his character underdeveloped and the story repetitive. The Hill’s focus on faith overshadows its role as a sports film, leading to missed opportunities for moments of impact and erasing much of the tension and emotion.
This article was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the work of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film covered here would not exist.
Before seeing The Hill, director Jeff Celentano’s inspirational new sports biopic, I knew nothing about minor-league baseball player Rickey Hill, an athlete whose narrative is meant to be as transcendental and epic as the best sports movies. According to the story, Rickey overcomes health problems and his father’s opposition to enter the world of professional baseball, a typical loser path, most likely popular with the public. Sadly, though, The Hill lacks the depth needed to truly sell Rickey’s run. Apart from the overly explicit religious message, the film fails to adequately present the obstacles that stand in his way and his reluctance to develop the main character leaves the whole story without substance.
Young Rickey Hill (Jesse Berry), son of gruff pastor James (Dennis Quaid), has big dreams of playing professional baseball and is gifted with an incredible talent for hitting the ball with a bat. It seems that his path is clearly traced, but there is a problem. Diagnosed with a degenerative spinal disease, he wears leg braces that restrict his movement and prevent him from having that full-body rotation often used by baseball players. James wishes Rickey would abandon his dreams of being an athlete, but Rickey’s faith gives him enough hope to continue pursuing them, especially as he grows older (with actor Colin Ford taking over for him) and shows signs of healing. However, when his biggest opportunity yet arrives, his health deteriorates, plunging the young player into an even more vicious fight.
The effectiveness of The Hill’s faith-based story will vary for each viewer. Personally, I had a hard time understanding how it clashed with Rickey’s path. Other than his love of baseball and his strong sense of faith, he has no real character. In the early scenes, James’ struggles as a shepherd take up more space than Rickey’s early development, and even when The Hill finally returns his attention to the young protagonist and his journey, he plunges into a rather repetitive pace. Rickey’s strength as a player lies in his impressive ability to consistently hit home runs, so The Hill only shows him hitting and having success. Celentano sets every moment Rickey prepares to hit the ball in exactly the same way, taking the interest and tension out of the moment.
It’s clear that the film, written by Angelo Pizzo and Scott Marshall Smith (and based on a screenplay by Aric Hornig and Stephen Hintz), isn’t interested in genuinely exploring Rickey’s skills and growth as a player. He’s brilliant from the start, as an apparent stranger tells him early on, and he remains brilliant. It’s very monotonous. The Hill’s conflict stems from objections from James and Rickey’s health issues, but even then, these issues aren’t presented as particularly devastating. James acquiesces to Rickey’s repeated insistence that it is his God-given destiny to play baseball, and even the detail that James has never attended a game by his son lacks emotional weight because, outside of that, it seems decently sympathetic. Meanwhile, Rickey’s degenerative spinal disease resurfaces as a young adult, but outside of people directly telling him he can’t play or walk, there’s little sign that this is a serious impediment to his abilities at all. how much Ford, who tries his best to play a character with few nuances, fails to adequately convey his physical disabilities.
Perhaps one of The Hill’s biggest problems is that it skips over events that, one would think, would have been the most significant to see. The moment Rickey first takes off his braces is not shown, but the audience is shown the moment James notices this in an awkwardly staged scene. Rickey’s early baseball tryouts and initial practice are ignored in favor of extended moments where he argues with James about God’s will. Faith is important to these characters, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, The Hill’s interest in being a faith-based film clashes with its standing as a sports biopic and general character study. At the end of the film, Rickey is still a bit of a mystery, because there’s so much we don’t know about him. Both Ford and Berry play Rickey with respectable effort, but that doesn’t make up for the story’s shortcomings. Of the rest of the cast, Quaid makes the strongest impression with a slightly adversarial character, though Bonnie Bedelia gets the next most-performed role as Rickey’s opinionated grandmother.
Overall, The Hill lacks many of the landmarks one would expect from a sports film, setting aside significant events in favor of its religious message. This leads to some surprising choices in character development and storytelling, which take much of the tension and emotion out of the film. Rickey certainly has an interesting journey, and there are moments where the power of him can be felt. Sadly, they don’t make up the majority of The Hill’s time.
The Hill hits theaters on Friday 25th August. It has a running time of 126 minutes and is rated PG for thematic content, language and smoking throughout.
2023-08-24 17:35:38
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