The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jim Carroll	Leonardo DiCaprio
Swifty	Bruno Kirby	½
Mickey	Mark Wahlberg
Neutron	Patrick McGaw	½
Pedro	James Madio	½
Jim’s mother	Lorraine Bracco
Reggie	Ernie Hudson
Diane Moody	Juliette Lewis
Skinhead	Michael Rapaport	½

Review

Leonardo DiCaprio was able to fully exploit the range of his raw, bursting talent in this tantalizing portrait of Jim Carroll, a working-class New Yorker who devoted his teenage years to basketball and hard drugs (respectively) and who eventually was able to break his habit and make a career as a poet and artist based on his memoirs. Although the direction by first-timer Scott Kalvert is somewhat bland (there is more poise and complexity to DiCaprio's performance than to the film's presentation of the thematics and environment), the film still retains an attractive grittiness and an erotic edge which probably made The Basketball Diaries more appealing as an eye-catcher than an effective warning on drug use back at the time of release. One of the drawbacks is that the time frame chosen by the filmmakers is messy, to say the least. In one moment, we're brought back to Carroll's sixties, before we in the next are back in something resembling the nineties. Buried in this mess, is an account which, despite moments of real poignance, seems to tread one too many cliches along the way. Calvert may have thought he made a critical film about drug use, but his fascination for the way of life he portrays becomes somewhat too transparent.