"Director: Scott Kalvert"

• The Basketball Diaries - Special Edition | Blu Ray | (18/03/2019) from £13.85   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll's epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim's life centres around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukaemia, a coach ( Swifty ) who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin - all of these begin to encroach on young Jim's dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother's mounting concern for her son. He can't go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighbourhood friend with whom Jim picked up a game now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity.

• The Basketball Diaries | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £18.13   |  Saving you £-5.14 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realise that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus interviews. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com