THROUGH THE FIRE
Directed & Produced by: Jonathan Hock.
Director of Photography: Alastair Christopher.
Edited by: Steven Pilgrim & Sam Citron.
Music by: Duncan Sheik & Pete Miser.
Released by: Cinema Libre/ESPN.
Country of Origin: USA. 103 min. Not Rated.

Teenage basketball wonderkund Sebastian Telfair is a star in the making. Clean-cut with a mega-watt smile, he’s an advertiser’s dream. Raised in a housing project, he has already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But Telfair’s potential success is not a given. Though the highest scorer in New York City’s history and on his way to the University of Louisville, he’s under six feet tall.

There’s plenty of suspense as Telfair’s team tries to win the city championship for an unprecedented third consecutive year, but the real action occurs off the court. One older brother, Jamel Thomas, was a star player at Providence College. To Jamel and his family’s dismay, he was not picked in the National Basketball Association draft. With Thomas’ disappointment as an example, Telfair has to decide between forgoing college and taking a shot at the NBA or going to school and possibly missing out on the big bucks.

In a departure from most sports docs, Through the Fire takes its time building the tension to the final outcome (even if the viewer has already been following Telfair in the news). Instead of fast-paced careening montages of dunk after dunk with the ubiquitous zoom lens, director Jonathan Hock locks his camera on Telfair as Jamel offers guidance in their training sessions or during the obscenity-fueled locker room pep talks. The similarities to Hoop Dreams are obvious: a Horatio Algers-like struggle out of the projects and the high expectation of the player’s family. But unlike the subjects of that documentary, Telfair is not only already a celebrity – he has signed a lucrative endorsement contract with Adidas. And it’s not every high school player who’s being watched by professional scouts, let alone Derek Jeter and Jay-Z, in the stands.

Hock’s approach is more fly-on-the-wall than exposé. The wheeling-and-dealing Adidas executives are merely supporting players here, but the financial and familial pressures on Telfair are apparent. Nor does Hock state the obvious: soon after signing with Adidas, Telfair buys one brother not just any car, but a Bentley. Since Telfair is now only 20, maybe there will be a sequel and he will have bought his mother the dream house he promised after all. Kent Turner
February 10, 2006