Résumé
- The Hill is a biographical film about Rickey Hill, a baseball player who overcame a spinal illness to achieve his dream.
- Like The Boys in the Boat, The Hill received high audience ratings and enjoyed success on Netflix despite mixed critical reception.
- Rickey Hill’s story in The Hill is mostly accurate, although some creative liberties are taken in his relationship with his father.
The biographical sports drama film The Hill presents the remarkable life story of Rickey Hill, an aspiring baseball player whose dream of playing in major league baseball was challenged by a debilitating spinal disease. The film reveals the various obstacles Hill faced throughout his life, starting with bullying and poverty during his childhood, before finally realizing his dream of playing professional baseball.
Like the biographical sports drama film The Boys in the Boat, The Hill demonstrates that inspiring and unabashedly sentimental underdog stories have timeless appeal, except apparently for critics, who viewed the film with as much cynicism as The Boys in the Boat. Despite this, The Hill, like The Boys in the Boat, received one of the highest audience ratings in recent history. Additionally, while the film only grossed approximately $7.6 million at the box office during its theatrical release, far less than The Boys in the Boat, the film found a much larger audience on the streaming platform Netflix, where it became one of the platform’s biggest hits. most watched films.
The Hill tells the incredible story of Rickey Hill, a true outsider
The Hills (2023)
Release date August 25, 2023
Director Jeff Celentano
Duration 2h 6min
Read our review
The screenplay for The Hill was co-written by Angelo Pizzo, who previously wrote the classic underdog sports films Hoosiers and Rudy, both inspired, to varying degrees, by real-life events and characters. Like Rudy, based on the life of Rudy Ruettiger, The Hill features a real-life protagonist who had to overcome major obstacles to realize his sporting dream.
Rickey Hill, played by Colin Ford, had a difficult childhood in which his degenerative spinal disease forced him to wear leg braces while enduring continual pain and numerous spinal surgeries. The Hill family’s poverty sometimes forced them to eat canned dog food.
Hill suffered vicious bullying throughout his childhood because of his leg braces and had a contentious relationship with his father, James, a Baptist preacher who wanted Hill to become a pastor and largely disapproved of Rickey’s quest to become a professional baseball player.
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However, despite his crippling spinal condition, Hill showed great talent for playing baseball from the age of seven when he, with the encouragement of his brother Robert, began playing baseball against older children. aged. By the age of 12, he gained a reputation as a prodigious hitter and was nicknamed the “home run king” by coaches and fellow players.
In 1975, Hill was signed by the Montreal Expos after putting on a dazzling performance during a major league tryout camp in Texas. Although he never played major league baseball, he had four productive seasons in the minor leagues until 1978, when his degenerative spinal disease forced him to retire from baseball at the age of 22.
The Hill is quite faithful to the real story
While The Hill certainly contains the requisite amount of creative license and exaggeration that occupies virtually every sports biopic, the film nonetheless remains faithful to the central elements of Rickey Hill’s true story, particularly regarding his fierce determination to play baseball as long as possible. his failing body would allow him to do so.
The Hill’s most important creative invention has to do with Rickey Hill’s minister father, played by Dennis Quaid, who delivers an excellent performance. In the film, Rickey’s relationship with his father is strained due to his father’s opposition to Rickey’s dream of becoming a professional baseball player.
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However, in real life, Rickey’s father, although he never encouraged Rickey’s baseball dream, was not as headstrong as he appears in the film. Additionally, while the film’s emotional climax shows Rickey and his father warmly embracing in the outfield of the tryout camp, James was not present for his tryout, where Rickey put on a spectacular hitting display.
In fact, Rickey’s father never saw Rickey play baseball during Rickey’s four-year minor league career and at virtually any other time. However, although this scene is fictional, the film’s climax nevertheless represents an accurate depiction of the overall evolution of Rickey’s relationship with his father, who officiated Rickey’s wedding, which took place at home plate on a baseball field on August 5, 1975. In his life, Rickey married his childhood sweetheart, Sherran, who is called Gracie Shanz in the film. Rickey and Sherran divorced in 1986 and had two children.
Rickey Hill found happiness after baseball
The Hill portrays Rickey Hill as a fierce competitor who viewed his body as a figurative tire and was determined to continue playing baseball until the tire, in his words, eventually burst. After playing in the minor leagues through excruciating pain, including bouts of temporary paralysis, Hill’s body finally gave out on him in 1978.
After retiring from baseball, Hill became a golf instructor and Little League coach in Fort Worth, Texas. He currently works as a financial planner, although the adulation he received from the film has made him a sought-after motivational speaker. Hill also continues to live in excruciating pain. After countless surgeries, his back was fitted with screws and a steel rod. Having lived with pain his entire life, Hill, who turned 67 about ten days before The Hill hits theaters on August 25, 2023, says he considers pain an old friend. The public can learn more about Rickey Hill on his official website, here. The Hill is currently streaming on Netflix.
Stream on Netflix
2024-02-03 21:51:46
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