The sports movie genre is dominated by men. On the big screen, it is strictly guys filming guys playing baseball, basketball, etc, giving each other high fives and starting chants in the locker room. Women rarely get the limelight. There are exceptions, like A League of Their Own, Million Dollar Baby, and Bend it Like Beckham, but overall, female-driven sports pictures just don’t get made despite, what I would imagine, is a yearning fan base.
I’d like to say Hustle is different, but it is not. There are certain pat conventions that persist here. Stereotypical roles like the supportive wife, the lusty love interest, or the cold rich heiress turned team owner are prevalent in sports pictures. In Hustle there is the supportive wife and daughter to Adam Sandler’s Stanley Sugerman, played by Queen Latifah and Jordan Hull respectively. I don’t mean to put down Queen Latifah’s role. She delivers a warm and sincere performance and it should not be overlooked that this is an interracial marriage portrayed on-screen, and an interracial daughter comes out of that bond. This is nice to see, but it doesn’t negate the fact that these are overly-simplified roles that serve very minor purposes in the film.
Hustle is about a basketball scout for the Philadelphia 76ers named Stanley Sugerman. At the start we find Stanley hopping across the globe, searching for undiscovered talent. He’s well into middle-age, drives a shitty car, is tired, and rarely gets to spend time with his family. Rex Merrick, the team owner, played by Robert Duvall, well-aware of Stanley’s predicament, offers Stanley a job as an Assistant Coach for the Sixers. For Stanley, this is great. It’s a job that requires far less travel and lets him spend more time with his daughter as she grows up. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes when Rex dies. The team is left in the hands of Rex’s spoiled and arrogant son Vincent. With Vincent at the wheel, Sunny goes back to being a talent scout, much to his chagrin.
Then something magical strikes. While scouting a player in Spain, Stanley comes across a hidden talent in a pick-up game named Bo Cruz. Sunny thinks he’s found a diamond in the rough. He recruits Bo and brings him back to the United States. It is here where Sunny puts Bo through a rigorous Rocky-esque training regimen in the hopes of getting him recruited by the Sixers.
It’s well into the picture when we get a little backstory on Stanley. He is a former stand-out point guard from Temple University who (spoiler alert) got into a car accident while driving drunk and destroyed one of his hands permanently. We also learn that Bo has some history with domestic violence which sullies his chances of getting recruited by an NBA team.
