Rez Ball Gives Navajo Teens Their Own Friday Night Lights

There’s a major barn burner waiting for anyone who presses play on the new Netflix sports drama Rez Ball, and we’re not talking about any of the games of high-school hoop it depicts in periodic, fleeting montage. No, the real fierce competition here is between everything distinctive and everything formulaic about this movie. On one side of the court, you have a vivid sense of culture, place, and milieu — the details of modern Native American life that characterize its arid rural backdrop.