O — ** — Mekhi Pfifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Andrew Keegan, Martin Sheen, Elden Henson, Rain Phoenix, John Heard; rated R (profanity, violence, sex, drug use, racial epithets, vulgarity, brief gore); see the "On the Screen" column for complete listing of local theaters.
Popular movie genres never die, no matter how much we wish some of them would.
High on the list for many of us would be teen-oriented adaptations of Shakespeare plays, which pretty much peaked and then petered out the same day that "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" came out.
But that hasn't stopped the flow of less successful (both critically and commercially) knock-offs. Of this bunch, the basketball drama "O" may be the most ambitious, but it's also one of the most disappointing.
While in concept it's an interesting, well-acted piece, it comes off as surprisingly slack and punchless, and doesn't come close to pulling off some of its more daring material.
"O" changes the place and time for Shakespeare's tragic drama "Othello," setting its action in an elite private school in the Deep South, circa the early 21st century. And rather than its title character being a Venetian moor, he's a black basketball player named Odin James, or "O" (Mekhi Pfifer).
Life is good for O. His coach (Martin Sheen) is beholden to him, college coaches are trying to recruit him. And the most popular girl in school, Desi Brable (Julia Stiles), is in love with him.
However, there is one person who isn't an O-booster — the coach's son, Hugo (Josh Hartnett), who doesn't believe he's getting the necessary respect and affection from his father, or the rest of the student body. So he begins elaborate scheme to bring O down.
The pawns in this plan are a fellow student (Elden Henson) who's in love with Desi, and O's former best friend (Andrew Keegan), who's been spending a lot of time with Desi as well (in an effort to get back into O's good graces).
Screenwriter Brad Kaaya's adaptation keeps many specific events from the play intact, but, unfortunately, they're played very broadly by directed Tim Blake Nelson (1997's "Eye of God").
Still, some of the performances make it watchable, including that of Pfifer, though his character's motivations are never quite clear. But up-and-comer Hartnett steals the show, and his brooding turn overshadows that of the film's star.
The supporting cast is a mixed bag, however, especially Sheen's over-the-top performance, and yet another, too-haughty turn by Stiles, appearing in her third Shakespeare revision (the others were "10 Things I Hate About You" and Michael Almereyda's "Hamlet").
"O" is rated R for frequent use of strong profanity, violence (gunplay and a strangulation), a fairly graphic scene of simulated sex, simulated drug use (cocaine and steroids), scattered use of racial epithets and crude sexual slang terms and brief gore. Running time: 95 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com