Even though he's the only black student at the elite Palmetto Grove Academy, star basketball player and future NBA hopeful Odin James has the adoration of all, including the team's coach and the Dean's beautiful daughter Desi. Odin's troubled friend Hugo, the coach's son, is deeply resentful of his father's preference of Odin on and off the court. When Hugo plots a diabolical scheme to sow the seed of mistrust between O and Desi, it sets in motion a disturbing chain of events which erupts into a firestorm of breathtaking intensity.
It's a doomy dirge of a movie, in which the protagonists, or at least the actors who play them, aren't equipped to handle their outsize passions.
– Peter Rainer,
New York Magazine/Vulture,
7 Sep 2001
rotten:
On your already groaning Shakespeare for Teens video shelf, stack this one above 10 Things I Hate About You ... and quite a bit below Romeo + Juliet.
– Richard Schickel,
TIME Magazine,
17 Sep 2001
rotten:
In the end, the Shakespearean ideas collapse on film because of the youthful callowness of the characters.
– Andrew Sarris,
New York Observer,
28 Sep 2001
rotten:
This transferral of the tragedy of the Moor to a contempo American high school is something that never should have gone further than a class assignment to see if it could be made to work.
– Todd McCarthy,
Variety,
25 Mar 2008
rotten:
This arty melodrama is not likely to make teenage America get down with Shakespeare.