User Reviews

A very good sports related drama. Kenny Williams(James McDaniel), a black educator from Texas leaves a past behind and takes a position teaching English at Three Nations High School in a small Native American community in Utah. Williams not only has problems fitting into the close knit society...he faces obstacles accepting coaching the girl's basketball team. He struggles with turning around a losing team and preparing them to hold their own against a rivaling nearby all-white high school.

Some interesting sub-plots and a strong cast featuring: Wes Studi, Tim Daly, Irene Bedard, Fraya Aspaas-Montoya, Eddie Spears, Trini King and most impressive Delanna Studi. Some very contrasting scenery filmed in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of my favorite scenes is when the black coach is called a 'white man'. This project had a very successful premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004.

"Edge" is a pretty weak adaptation of a documentary by Rick Derby called "Rocks with Wings." I caught Derby's documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival a few years ago and I recently rented "Edge" because I enjoyed Derby's work so much and was excited to see that a movie seemed to have been made based on it. After watching it, however, I thought it unfortunate that movie makers couldn't make a great adaptation without turning it into a syrupy "Remember the Titans" formula or ratcheting away the true humanity and beauty of a work like "Rocks" by throwing in stereotyped Native-American problems of teen delinquency (teen pregnancy and alcoholism, which is nowhere in the documentary) and a poor excuse for a sports climax (when basketball was only half of the story in the documentary). "Edge" also only gave a brief patronization of the whole idea of the Navajo art philosophy central to the documentary, and outright ridiculed the "rocks with wings" mythology ("No, it's just a big rock"). The characters were flat and stereotyped and the story arc plain implausible and rushed. It's a shame that a better movie couldn't have been made that would be true to the cultural lessons and conflicts and in posthumous honor of Jerry (the African-American coach who comes from the east coast to teach/coach in Shiprock, New Mexico). Aside from the obvious, none of the important conflicts of the documentary could be found in the movie; i.e. the cultural clash between African-American individual achievement in the face of adversity (of which Jerry was a great example) vs. the Navajo cultural ethos of taking things as they come; or the real and interesting spiritual dichotomy between traditional Navajo mythology and the newer ideas of Christianity—both important to the native community; the triumph of unity that the team's success brought to the community was also missing; also, the metaphor of Navajo art and expression compared to the real life drama unfolding in the lives of the girls, the coaches and the team mother, as these conflicts and the "imperfection" of their lives and humanness that led them to ultimately learn to "win the right way." "Edge" will let you kill a couple hours with an almost-well done formula movie about a conflict of cultures within the context of a high school girls basketball team, but for a much richer look at a real life drama that comes from a clash of cultures and coaching styles, the injustice of discrimination and triumph of human desire, the connections between life and art, the heroism within competitive sports and a myriad of human motives that play out among a cast of characters that are a universal microcosm of the people we meet everyday, check out Derby's documentary.

Chris Eyre's movies are always interesting because he lets us glimpse into the lives of contemporary American Indians. "Edge of America" is no exception and therefore worth watching.

However, unfortunately, the story does not really explore any of the issues it touches on, such as inter-minority racism, lack of adequate housing on the reservation, economic problems, alcoholism and drug abuse, single parenting, teenage pregnancy, lack of perspectives for teenagers and all the related problems, cultural differences and resulting misunderstandings between minorities, and more.

It was not clear to me why the new English teacher - Kenny Williams - took the job in the first place. At some point he said he "needed to slow everything down", but I would have liked to learn more about his motivation to live and teach on an Indian reservation.

I was glad to see Wes Studi in a different role than that of the bad guy, and I enjoyed his exchanges with Mr. Williams, but I did not see a real connection between Mr. Williams and the girls and could not follow the change in their relationship that supposedly happened somewhere along the line.