Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend


The Pistol is the story of the early years of Pete Maravich. While this movie is anything but amazing in its production value, what it lacks in the production it makes up for with heart. The whole movie mainly focuses around the struggles and successes of Maravich in the 8th grade. One of the things that really makes this movie a solid one is that it is a great family film.

The first half of the film was particularly fascinating to me because Adam Guier is credible in his exhibiting the tremendous ball handling skills that Maravich had for a kid his age. Adam Guier does a great job as well in portraying the awkwardness of an 8th grader playing on the varsity team, who really just has a longing to be liked by his classmates and teammates. This movie was made to describe the basketball history of Pete Maravich, and shows a special relationship between Pete and his father, which I thought was refreshing. It's a joy to see a parent who did his best to establish common ground with his child so that they could relate to each other.

While the production value is not amazing the film still manages to capture great shots throughout. While many times they used a lot of the same shots over and over throughout games it was still a fun film to watch that helped to capture a lot of the intensity of a high school basketball game. Not too mention it would really help any youngster with heart to see a bunch of different ball handling skills.

My only complaint is the second half of the movie becomes so Hollywood cliched. Now I am sure parts of it are correct to the actual story, but I am sure there are still those that do not accept Maravich, but in all this is a strong movie.

I really enjoyed this movie. While it is not a big Hollywood backed movie it is still enjoyable. It is well worth watching every now and then. I am giving this film two and a half buckets of popcorn out of five. This is a movie that is well worth the price of renting.

-The Movie Man-

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