Review of The Basketball Diaries (1995) by Kristian T — 24 Mar 2008

There have been quite a few addiction movies, but most are surface melodramas, concerned with busting the bad guys or facilitating a Hollywood-style transformation from user to productive member of society. Films like The Basketball Diaries, which paint a stark, ugly portrait of drug abuse, are rare.

The movie weaves between reality and the drug-infused, nightmarish dreams of Carroll fantastically. There are a lot of graphic and raw scenes, but the scene most difficult to watch for me has Carroll pleading to his mother to give him money for a fix. His mother has locked the door on him, unable to trust her own son, and sobs uncontrollably over what he has become.

Overall, this film presents a richly woven swatch of a fabric many of us never feel, of life on the streets seen through the eyes of one who can really tell us about it, make us feel it, make us hurt. Visually slick, morally ambiguous, possessed of a truly engaging tour guide, The Basketball Diaries is a cinematic trip to a place most of us rarely visit, but will benefit from having seen.