Unguarded

Year: 2011

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Hock

Review

from the writer of ‘the best that never was’ which may have been my favorite from the 30 for 30 series, comes another cautionary tale about an athlete who fell short of his potential. this one is a basketball player (chris herren) from massachucetts who basically shits away his life thanks to his addiction to drugs of various kinds. it captures the essence of addiction well and you see the way it eats away at everything around herren. addiction is all-consuming and it’s really a shame that we don’t have a better system in place to deal with it. some say that addiction doesn’t go away it just gets replaced. well, in this case the addiction to drugs is replaced by an addiction to recovery and telling his story. if you’ve ever hung out with people from the 12 step program you know that it becomes they’re new addiction in many cases. they talk about the system all the time and the people they know in the program, etc. it’s the lesser of two evils i guess.

at any rate, the film does a really good job of showing the ebb and flow of herren’s life.