reminded me the other week, Hollywood is currently facing a deficit of genuine personalities. Sure, we know who Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot technically are, but when saddled with the wrong project, or even the right one, they each dissolve into mere ephemeral names. Highly sculpted sentient beings composed of equal parts familiarity and disposability. Will Smith, on the other hand, he’s a real-deal superstar. He bleeds charisma.
Playing Richard Williams, the intensely devoted but also just plain intense father to tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams, Smith elevates a standard-issue sports-drama into the stratosphere of sky-high entertainment. Never away from the screen for more than a second or two, Smith gives absolutely everything he has to play a man with the world’s largest chip on his shoulders.
Playing Richard Williams, Smith elevates a standard-issue sports-drama into the stratosphere of sky-high entertainment.A security guard in Compton, Calif., Richard spends his nights on the graveyard shift and his days moulding his preteen daughters Venus and Serena into the greatest tennis players the world has ever seen. The elite, nearly all-white world of professional tennis constantly shrugs Richard off, and his neighbours think he’s either deluded or an abusive parent.
But going down that path means interrogating the real life behind this “real-life” drama. From its outset,– which is executive produced by the Williams sisters – never once pretends to be an actual warts-and-all underdog story.That would require, for starters, focusing as much time on Venus and Serena as it does Richard. It would also require devoting more than a mere mention, during an argument between Richard and wife Brandy , to the family that Richard had before meeting Brandy.
Wisely, director Reinaldo Marcus Green never gets in his star’s way. Every single scene, even Venus and Serena’s matches where Richard is off-court, is executed with an impressive devotion to whatever Smith is doing. We watchwatch, and somehow the dramatic tension remains. Green, whose last film was the tremendously bad faux tear-fest, keeps his film humming with as much keep-it-coming-keep-it-coming energy as Richard put toward ensuring his daughters would become legends in their own time.
Will Smith has always been a great talent. He is able to find his stride at every stage of his career. Some junkers along the way but this is how we learn. Keep entertaining us Will, love your work.
We forgot that actors are capable of acting, but Will Smith reminds us!
It sounds Brave and Powerful
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