The Basketball Diaries (1995)

	Directed by: Scott Kalvert	COUNTRY USA GENRE Biography/Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Netter i New York RUNNING TIME 100 minutes
	Produced by: Liz Heller John Bard Manulis
	Written by: Bryan Goluboff

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	-

Review

Leonardo DiCaprio was able to fully exploit the range of his raw, bursting talent in this tantalising portrait of Jim Carroll, a working-class New Yorker who devoted his teenage years to basketball and hard drugs (respectively), and who eventually managed 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 in DiCaprio's performance than in the film's presentation of the themes and environment), the film still retains an attractive grittiness and an erotic edge that probably made The Basketball Diaries more appealing as an eye-catcher than an effective warning on drug use back at the time of its 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 are in the next back in something resembling the nineties. Buried in this mess is an account which, despite moments of real poignancy, treads one cliché too many along the way. Kalvert may have thought he was making a critical film about drug use, but his fascination with the way of life he portrays becomes somewhat too transparent.