The Hill
The Hill is a motivational sports drama. It tells the story of Rickey Marshall, a young man growing up in poverty who also has a disability and is the son of a preacher. Eventually, he becomes a professional baseball player. However, this movie feels longer than it should be due to its characterizations not matching up with other aspects like acting or directing (even though they are good) and because nearly every single person in this film except for one bully and his friends shown briefly during two scenes is so sincere and kind hearted that it verges on being too much. It’s like listening to an hour long sermon delivered by competent clergyman lacking fire enough to get people shouting “amen” without prompting.
Jeff Celentano directs Scott Marshall Smith’s posthumous screenplay (the late scribe also penned “Men of Honor”) along with Angelo Pizzo (writer behind “Rudy” as well as “Hoosiers”). They retell those events set in Fort Worth where Texan native Rickey grew up; such storytelling resembles Pizzo-scripted works best exemplified by original “Rocky,” wherein protagonist accomplishes relatively little compared against standard Hollywood fare yet does so under more difficult circumstances thereby making achievement all the more rousing. So called Hill son belonging Baptist preacher always dreamed about reaching majors despite having been diagnosed spinal degeneration necessitating leg braces at an early age, poverty stricken background meant lack proper gear, taught himself how bat using stones plus sticks while big sibling pitched alongside coached him. Nevertheless hard-hitting abilities still sprouted within Hill who spent 19 years old playing three months representing Montreal Expos before then featuring another four seasons throughout various minor leagues.
This isn’t a faith based film problem. Some of the best movies ever made are about spirituality. It’s the lack of imagination in this script that kills it, even when it throws together legitimate, painful conflicts between characters with equally valid but irreconcilable agendas (such as the hero, who is torn between what he believes to be two destinies playing ball and following in his preacher dad’s footsteps). They feel programmed because they’re from life or at least from other movies and it doesn’t help that the hero and all other major characters, including his love interest, have two and a half dimensions at best. They’re so nice! Even when they’re distressed or angry, they’re so nice that you can’t really see how anyone could have rational (or even irrational) objections to anything they do or say or want.
Jesse Berry plays Rickey as a boy, and Colin Ford (“Under the Dome”) steps in to play him as a teenager. The movie’s only edge comes from its depiction of Rickey’s relationship with his dad, James (Dennis Quaid), who believes that his son’s destiny is to succeed him behind the pulpit; opposes Rickey’s baseball dreams; and likens baseball cards to false idols stored in a gallery of sin. This is like both versions of “The Jazz Singer,” where there’s a young man who would rather be a secular musical performer than a cantor except that our guy loves preaching the word and kicks ass at it. (“I thought I was going to be the best Baptist preacher,” Hill told Risen magazine. “I was going to be the next Billy Graham.”)
Whenever “The Hill” lets James verbally beat up on his son about God versus sports or vice versa it starts playing above Replacement Level Faith Based Movie Ball. The screenplay lets opposing forces gently push against each other without resolution until you get a clear sense of how people’s conditioning and pathologies impede them from making the right choice. Young Rickey tells his father that he can be God’s representative on the field as effectively as he can in a church, and gives him a drawing of a baseball diamond in which opposing bases have been connected with straight lines to create a cross shape. You would think such an imaginative display of sincerity would persuade Hill’s dad to change his mind even just out of fear of having to sit through six more years of sermons that good! But no. He lets Rickey play ball. Then, six years later, when Rickey is a high school star, James tells visitors to their home that he has yet to see one game (no bets will be taken on whether Dad eventually shows up in the stands).
When it isn’t wrestling (nicely) with these matters or lifting its soundtrack cues from “The Natural,” “The Hill” is just another well-meaning, dutiful trudge toward an ordained destination. It extends every scene for no reason except that the director wants you to feel all the emotions harder, and despite building nearly every scene around him, it doesn’t give us any kind of access to Rickey’s emotional interior. He’s just this polite talented kid who wants to do a thing but is stopped by people who mean well, and instead of feeling like we’re watching someone struggle against himself or grow into himself or even question himself very much at all it feels like we’re watching someone run up against dead air. The central relationship’s potential is blunted too; outside those great scenes where Hill holds his own in verbal duets with Quaid (an emotionally constipated scold who is established as having a good heart beneath it all), there aren’t enough notes here for two actors capable of playing whole octaves apart let alone for two as fine and empathetic as these.
The film gives him leeway to be obstinate and irrational, but it doesn’t have the guts to let him tip over into monstrosity or even plain unlikability for long. There’s a scene where James takes Rickey’s older brother Robert (Mason Gillett) around back of the house to whip him with a belt as punishment for supporting Rickey’s baseball dreams, during his windup, however, he chokes back tears and sends him inside unstruck. Brutal physical punishment still happens in American homes, including ones where families go to church together and consider the life and teachings of Jesus. But this is not that kind of movie the kind that would show you that contradiction by having a movie star beat a child.
Most of the characters are a notch or two above “types.” Ricky’s girlfriend Grace (played as a teen by Siena Bjornerud and as a child by Mila Harris) is self-possessed from start to finish, tossing off snappy patter that suggests somebody ran the Annie Savoy character from “Bull Durham” through a “Gilmore Girls” filter. Scott Glenn shows up late in the movie as the baseball scout who lets Rickey strut his stuff (a 40 years later reunion of sorts for actors from “The Right Stuff” Glenn played Alan Shepard), and manages to convince you that this person had a full and fascinating life before he stepped into frame. But that’s magic more attributable to an actor’s depth than alchemy involving what he’s given to say.
Joelle Carter (“Justified”), so fiery on her own show, gets one sustained, powerful scene as James’ wife Helen she’d like to oppose him but can’t find those kinds of reserves but is otherwise sidelined and sometimes reduced to watching other characters like they’re on TV; Bonnie Bedelia, who would be an above-the-title name in a just world, fares slightly better as the hero’s salt of the earth grandmother, rocking a silver Ma Joad goes to the Oscars hairstyle. (Another “Hill” issue for another “Hill” piece: Age-wise, this cast is retro in a bad way. Carter is almost 20 years younger than Quaid; Bedelia is only eight years older.)
According to interviews given on Rickey Hill’s website and some pre-release interviews conducted with the filmmakers, he now follows in his father’s footsteps by spreading the good word while also selling hemp-based wellness kits. Some people feel that they’re never more beat than when they’ve had a taste of success and lost it, Hill doesn’t. Nor does he act like he was deprived of anything greater than what happened to him, whether by physical limits or upbringing though many who have been through similar things might say that about themselves. A documentary about his whole life would probably be more interesting than this segment of it; it might have a better chance of depicting him and every other important character in three dimensions; and it might speak more directly to everybody else’s actual life which lacks the neat dramatic shape (and happy ending) Hollywood prefers.
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