I was worried that they were going to balls this one up. A biopic about the Williams sisters, tennis players so famous that even I know who they are, told from the point-of-view of their father and coach. Not gonna lie, as soon as I saw that setup and the Will Smith-heavy marketing for the thing, I assumed we’d be in for another Dangal, where the attempt to be inspiring with the dramatisation of a real-life woman’s sporting story gets railroaded to give all the emphasis to a particular man in her life. And while that is definitely the perspective given, I’d argue that this works out much better than in Dangal’s case, as using that specific perspective affords the film many opportunities for resonating material, almost all of which are utilised.
Will Smith’s performance here as Richard Williams shows him in rare form, but where that fact becomes genuinely impressive is with how finicky this script is concerning his character. Richard, as depicted in this film, is where the line between driven and dangerously obsessed is thinner than the string on a tennis racquet, showing him as having worked out the career paths of Venus and Serena before they were even born. And for every positive decision he makes, there’s about ten other instances of him getting stuck in his own way, serving as more of a detriment to his children’s development and success than a benefit. Watching him lecture his kids on the moral of Disney’s Cinderella was a very surreal scene.
And yet I say all of that as a positive in the film’s favour. Partly because the writing and direction show enough awareness of his behaviour to not try and handwave the points where he legitimately fucks up, but mainly because the framing around that behaviour invites some very compelling ideas. He’s shown to be extremely fixated on the idea of Venus and Serena as tennis pros, but that fixation is offset by the reason why he’s so hell-bent on making sure his daughters succeed: So that they can get away from the influence of the m.A.A.d city.
The way that it’s portrayed also makes for some surprisingly nuanced points, highlighting that the pull of criminal activity in the area, and the stresses of professional sporting that can led to similarly illegal activity, have a fair amount of overlap and for a lot of the same reasons to do with dealing with the environment. It even makes the astute observation that the extent to which Richard pushes his daughters in their training, and the extent to which their better-off white competition are being pushed by their own parents, aren’t that dissimilar. They’re both the products of adults trying to live out their dreams through their children, after all.
And it’s with that that the film’s depth of focus truly makes itself known, as that whole idea of Richard’s ego taking centre stage? The film itself is about how he needs to get out of that mindset. For as much as the audience is shown ample reason why he would be pushing this hard to escape the bad influences around them (especially in a scene where Richard pulls a gun on someone, threatening to succumb to those very same influences himself), it never loses sight of how much of that motivation comes from inside him and, more important, why that shouldn’t distract from the victories that are wholly of Venus and Serena’s making. It’s less Richard trying to overtake the story of someone else, and more that it’s his perspective on a story that is emphatically someone else’s, as in every scene with Venus and Serena playing tennis, it’s about them more than anyone else. As it should be.
It’s a very precarious tightrope walk this film tries to make, keeping the Williams sisters front and centre while also emphasising their father as the perspective the story is viewed from, but director Reinaldo Marcus Green pulls it off brilliantly. Outside of Will himself, the cast is amazing (Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney as the sisters are great, Jon Bernthal continues his hot streak as one of their coaches, not to mention Aunjanue Ellis as their mother who gets a particularly powerful scene to shine in), and with its off-centre framing, it’s quite refreshing in how different it plays out compared to a lot of other sports-centric biopics. Having seen the mistakes this film could have so easily made for myself, the fact that the film itself is about how important it is for men to not hog the spotlight from women in their moment of triumph is very satisfying and relieving to see.
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