In this quintessentially American documentary, filmmaking brothers Joshua and Benny Safdie track the unfulfilled destiny of Lenny Cooke, who was the number-one ranked high school basketball player in America in 2001 but ends up going undrafted, and becomes a journeyman playing in little-known leagues across the world now.
Lazy, fly-on-the-wall filmmaking. The Safdie brothers have the benefit of some rare extant footage, but absolutely no idea how to shape it into an interesting narrative.
The film's informed voyeuristic style ... allows Cooke's actions to speak louder than any words the often soft spoken protagonist might have shed on his life.
The question of why Cooke's career never materialized hangs over the movie, but is never answered. What emerges instead is a portrait of a talented teenager being readied ... for a future that doesn't arrive.
That the first half of the film is largely older footage (previously shot for an earlier project by Adam Shopkorn) endows it with wistfulness. No matter how merry the events, they're obviously distant fragments of a broken dream.
It's a spirited experiment in documentary form, with the directors showing great imagination in their fusion of new and archival footage, and their portrait of Cooke, assembled largely from offhand moments, conveying a sharp dramatic sensibility.
How could a top prospect drop off the map within a year? That's the cautionary tale spun by Lenny Cooke, a troubling, artfully constructed documentary.
The Safdies have done remarkably well in resurrecting an old project, which although lacking in production value, simply needed to be seen by the world.
Filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie use real-time footage to follow this hopeful, affable young man as he becomes a bitter has-been over the course of a decade.
