In Review: 'Jurassic World Dominion,' 'Hustle'

The 'Jurassic' series takes its inevitable turn into an agribusiness conspiracy thriller and Adam Sandler's new Netflix drama casts him as an NBA scout who bonds with an unknown Spanish prospect.

Jurassic World Dominion
Dir. Colin Trevorrow
146 min.

One of the most memorable shots in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park features no special effects. Just before we get our first really good look at the dinosaurs, the camera lingers on Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), a paleontologist who’s dumbstruck at the sight of brachiosauruses grazing peacefully in the field. Her look of astonishment is a promise that the next shot must fulfill, and, amazingly, it does. Wow! Dinosaurs!

In one of the many homages to Jurassic Park in Jurassic World Dominion, the sixth film in the series, Dern repeats the look of surprise only this time she's beholding a field of grain that’s been devastated by locusts with dino-infused DNA while a neighbor’s crop, grown from seed created by the multinational science conglomerate Biosyn, lies unmolested. It’s, to put it mildly, a little less awe-inspiring. Wow! Evidence of a corporate conspiracy to control the world’s grain market! But the wonder gap between those two shots pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the difference between Jurassic past and Jurassic present.

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To be fair, the franchise has struggled for a reason to exist since the first outing. The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III were largely enjoyable retreads of the first movie. 2015’s Jurassic World at least had the novel (if implausible even by the standards of a third sequel) idea of exploring what would happen if a dinosaur theme park actually were to open. The answer: nothing good. Also not good: the Trevorrow-directed movie itself, a mean-spirited, wonder-free mess with two deeply unlikeable leads: ex-military raptor trainer Owen and career-minded park manager Claire. Played, respectively, by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, they returned in slightly less obnoxious form in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, a considerably better effort, directed by J.A. Bayona with welcome visual flair, whose final act turned into a haunted house movie but with dinosaurs instead of ghosts. 

Trevorrow returns to the director’s chair for Dominion, an attempt at a similar bit of genre gene-splicing, this time dropping dinosaurs into a globe-hopping trail of international intrigue. The graft doesn’t take nearly as well. Dominion is set in the aftermath of Fallen Kingdom’s final scene, which concluded with dinosaurs reentering the wild. That’s a promising hook and, at least for the length of the exposition-filled newsbreak that opens this sequel, it seems like Dominion will run with it. But no. Instead, Dominion finds the Jurassic World leads teaming up with the original cast of Jurassic Park (Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum) to thwart the scheme of a charismatic-but-amoral tech leader Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott). It plays like an extremely familiar espionage movie in which dinosaurs have been hurriedly stuffed into every corner. Let’s escape using the underground mine shaft (filled with dinosaurs). We have to save our daughter from kidnappers (who have also kidnapped dinosaurs). Etc.

Oh right: there’s also a kid (Isabella Sermon), returning from Fallen Kingdom,  who’s the first human clone. That ultimately doesn’t factor into the plot as much as you might imagine. It’s just another element in an overstuffed, overlong mess that can most kindly be called “functional.” Goldblum and Scott bring some wry touches to their performances, and the dinosaur effects (still) look good. But  it’s hard to agree when Ellie, brought face-to-face with a baby triceratops, coos about how such encounters never get old. It got old a long time ago. What’s left is just kind of shambling along. —Keith Phipps 

Jurassic World is now in theaters.

Hustle
Dir. Jeremiah Zagar
117 min.

Hustle is about a seasoned professional who gets fired from his job at a major sports organization and stakes his comeback around the talent of one volatile athlete. It’s about the tutelage of a cocky hustler who cons other players in underground pick-up games. It’s about an underdog made good whose grizzled mentor trains him on the streets and staircases of Philadelphia. In summary, it’s Jerry Maguire meets The Color of Money meets Rocky. Been there, done that, right? 

Not necessarily. Though undeniably formulaic, Hustle stands as a compelling argument for how much the world of a film can authenticate the drama within it. Produced by LeBron James and marketing giant Maverick Carter, among others, the film immerses itself in the gyms and front offices of the NBA, and loads the screen with pro talent, starting with the casting of a current NBA power forward, Juancho Hernangómez, in a starring role. With Adam Sandler doing understated work as a scout who risks his reputation on a raw, undiscovered 22-year-old from Spain, Hustle is a hoophead’s delight, rife with detail about international scouting and networking, the language of NBA insiders, and even the specific abuses of hotel minibars. Like a quality recruit, it does all the little things it takes to win. 

After years of hopscotching the globe as a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers, Stanley Sugarman (Sandler) finally gets his dream job as an assistant coach, which will keep him closer to his wife (Queen Latifah) and the daughter whose last nine birthdays he’s missed. But when the team’s owner (Robert Duvall) dies, his egotistical son Vince (Ben Foster) takes over basketball operations and decides that Stanley was better off in his old job. Wearily hitting the road again on a talent search, Stanley stumbles onto a street game in Spain, where Bo Cruz (Hernangómez), a wiry young wing in work boots, is taking on all comers. Stanley is thunderstruck by his discovery, who he describes as “like Scottie Pippen and a wolf had a baby,” but Vince isn’t convinced and denies Bo a contract. 

From there, Hustle focuses on Stanley’s personal efforts to bring Bo to the States, which means the young man would have to leave his mother and young daughter, and carve out a circuitous path to the NBA through street games, scrimmages, and Stanley calling in favors to old friends in the league. He also has to coach and condition Bo up to a pro level, so when he gets on the same stage as a hotter draft prospect like Kermit Wilts (Anthony Edwards), he doesn’t fold under pressure. (Edwards, a former #1 draft pick and current phenom for the Minnesota Timberwolves, is perfect casting as Bo’s rival. He plays the heel with a rascally, Bugs Bunny infectiousness.) One bad appearance—one bad possession—could be the difference between a shot at NBA stardom and permanent exile to the Euroleague hinterlands. 

Neither Sandler nor Hernangómez puts much spin on the ball dramatically, trusting that,  to win the audience’s favor, their grind-it-out humility needs no further embellishment. No doubt that Hernangómez’s low-key naturalism owes to his own experience as a player who had to work his way up from the Spanish pro league, but his persuasiveness on the court is a big part of what makes Hustle work, too. When Hernangómez and Edwards go one-on-one, we’re treated to top-level skill and physicality, and the familiar faces from the league that surround them, including most of the current Sixers roster and a handful of other big-name cameos, adds a crucial verisimilitude to a by-the-numbers plot. Many NBA dreams may follow the same story arc, but the difference is in the telling. — Scott Tobias

Hustle is currently streaming on Netflix.