Blu-ray Review: The Basketball Diaries

Based on a true story, The Basketball Diaries (1995) chronicles the life-changing times of poet Jim Carroll's youth in the early 1960s. As a talented basketball player at a Manhattan Catholic school, Jim showed lots of promise for a professional career. However, his recreational activities with high-school buddies embroiled him in petty crime and hard drugs, including heroin. Now available on Blu-ray from Palm Pictures, The Basketball Diaries provides an interesting retrospective on Leonard DiCaprio's early acting career. After winning several awards for the 1993 critically acclaimed What's Eating Gilbert Grape, DiCaprio took on the intense dramatic role of Jim Carroll.

As much as Jim enjoys basketball and writing in his diary, he spends more time hanging out and causing trouble with his friends including Mickey (Mark Wahlberg), Pedro (James Madio), and Neutron (Patrick McGaw). His best friend Bobby (Michael Imperioli) fights a losing battle with leukemia, and Jim tries to bring some small pleasures to his dying friend. Don't be mistaken -- Jim's not a good boy gone bad, it's evident right away that he has no respect for authority and a penchant for drugs. His mother (Lorraine Bracco) can't understand what's wrong with her son, and after he spirals out of control she kicks him out of their home.

DiCaprio's portrayal of Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries is brutal and raw, often gut wrenching. As engrossing as a bad car accident, the film hooks viewers into watching as Jim sinks deeper and deeper into the seedy and frightening underworld of addiction. Mark Wahlberg delivers as the tough buddy who sticks with his friends until his drug-induced zealousness results in the death of a drug dealer. The late Bruno Kirby plays Jim's basketball coach who wants to get to know him better in a more intimate way. Although I'm not typically a fan of Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers), her small role as a dopehead who will do anything to score a fix is underrepresented. Ernie Hudson (Congo, Ghostbusters) as Reggie would also have been welcome with more screen time. Jim Carroll himself oddly appears in a cameo role true to his life of this era.

The dialogue of The Basketball Diaries is a bit pedestrian at times, and the ending is a bit more anticlimactic than one might expect from a film based on a non-fiction story. Surprisingly enough, the cinematography doesn't really do much to capture the drug-addled mind of Jim beyond a dream sequence where he runs through a poppy field.

The Blu-ray transfer of The Basketball Diaries, presented in an AVC-encoded 1.78:1 widescreen presentation, is not visually impressive. Darker scenes lack clarity and are a bit muddled, especially in the shadows. The audio doesn't stand out much either. Despite a decent soundtrack, from the era the movie was created and not when it takes place, the Blu-ray doesn't enhance the soundtrack noticeably.

Special features: There are only two supplements for this film:

• A brief interview with Jim Carroll (who passed away in September 2009) along with a reading from one of his books, which was featured in Ron Mann's 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion. It was both interesting and disturbing to hear Carroll's casual recollection of his youth.
• Almost 10 minutes of interviews with cast members and director Scott Kalvert. The interviews were done in 1995, and provide an interesting but fragmented retrospective of the interview style and DiCaprio's early career. Pieced together are random answers to questions, without much cohesiveness within.

The Basketball Diaries Blu-ray is worth a rental if you've not seen the film. However, I would not recommend the Blu-ray version as an addition to anyone's collection unless you are a Jim Carroll or diehard DiCaprio fan -- even then, the quality and supplements don't add much to the package.