Him, a Jordan Peele-produced splatter film in the psychological mold of Us, deviates from the schmaltzy, feel-good formula that has defined American sports movies since Charlie Chaplin in The Champion. Tackle football, notorious for eating the young, is recast as a genuine meat grinder for Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) – a generational college quarterback touted as an heir apparent to Marlon Wayans’s Isaiah White, the Tom Brady of this world. But when a trippy, blunt force head injury endangers Cameron’s professional aspirations and multimillion-dollar payday, he agrees to train and rehab at Isaiah’s desert-based cement compound – a haunted house of vice and duplicity that threatens to swallow Cameron whole.
Him is not a subtle critique of America’s pastime. It opens with Isaiah breaking his leg on a championship-winning drive, and young Cameron taking in the gruesome injury from his living room floor while his father drills the mantra “no guts, no glory” into his psyche. It reintroduces football, quite rightly, as a veritable meat market where players are poked, prodded and scrutinized like chattel. Director Justin Tipping even switches to X-ray vision to bring out the underlying damage that can result from football’s incessant collisions, one of many stylish visual touches.
But where a sports movie like F1 can get away with stretching the truth for US audiences who aren’t likely to know the difference, Him makes suspending disbelief a staggering struggle. Because of football’s seemingly intractable position at the center of American life, the viewers who come to this film are more than likely already acutely aware of the singular privilege and leverage that quarterbacks enjoy in the game and, thus, likely to call bullshit on the idea of a prospect of Cameron’s caliber having to jump through the same physical challenges as a middling wide receiver or defensive lineman. Another terrible stretch is Wayans playing a fading gridiron legend at the dear age of 53, much less one who can afford a desert compound – more of a luxury for Major League Baseball, where contracts are fully guaranteed.
Him makes a big deal of Cameron showcasing his abilities at a scouting combine, a once-important job interview that top quarterbacks routinely blow off now. Cameron’s physical fitness becomes something to obsess over even as standout NFL QBs rock dad bods. (Brady’s shirtless combine photo, more than 25 years old now, is famously disappointing.) Cameron and Isaiah are offered up as exceptional football players without a practical demonstration for a setup or a payoff. Isaiah is established as a mentor to Cameron even though a pro QB fighting against time to keep his job would never assume that role. Recall: job replacement training was a central point of conflict in Any Given Sunday, a film that manages to successfully relate the horrors of professional football without much distortion.
Without firm grounding in reality, Him can only skid, hopelessly, into the realm of kabuki theater and make a muddle of its football critique. It’s too bad because the film has some interesting things to say about the game – specifically, its conflation of white Christian values and American jingoism. In the real world, players are coached to order their lives in a three-pile stack: God, family and football. But in Him, Isaiah puts football above the divine and talks quite soberly about how “He died for us so I play for Him.” The pro team in question here is called the Saviors, and Isaiah’s picture is propped up among young Cameron’s football trophies like a holy card among votive candles – a true shrine.
Tipping, one of three writers on the film, uses the concept of the sports Goat, the acronym for greatest of all time, to present football as a pagan religion, complete with blood sacraments and tangible sacrifices, while cutting back and forth from Christian symbols to occult imagery. One shot in particular, of Cameron at a Last Supper-style photoshoot in the Jesus position, prompted a handful of viewers at my Atlanta screening to walk out. You can just imagine God-fearing football fans – ostensibly, Him’s target audience – taking similar offense.
The most memorable performances in Him come from the supporting cast. Tim Heidecker and Jim Jefferies shine as Cameron’s agent and Isaiah’s doctor, respectively, and the model Julia Fox is a pleasant surprise as Isaiah’s wife. But it’s not enough to negate Wayans’s hammier tics or stand up a story that would have anyone believe he is him – itself a neologism for “the man”. What could have been a truly cutting takedown of the American football meat grinder just winds up playing to the very appetite for human carnage that fans can’t get enough of. No matter your view of Him, as a slasher or a sports film, it’s a fumble.
