Nowitzki: The Perfect Shot (2014)

Simply A Masterpiece

hyped garbage

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Blistering performances.

As the most of us I know Dirk Nowitzki just as a baskteball player but not the story of his career. This movie gives a nice view behind the facade of a career of a humble, extremely ambitious and super sympathetic athlete and some facts about it are really fascinating (Holger). The style of the movie, I think also great, a great mix of original recordings and comments from the present go hand in hand on the career journey of this exceptional athlete. So from my point of view this is a must for every basketball fan.

As I have always been a follower of Dirk Nowitzki and his splendid career, I would love to write a more enthusiastic review, but unfortunately I'm not able to ignore the loveless direction of this picture and its one-sided view.A quick look at Wikipedia would be enough to gather most of the information shown in this documentary, which is also quite disappointing. It just doesn't create a satisfied feeling of coming closer to Dirk or determining the essence of "the perfect shot", which I expected given the fact that this documentary was produced for the cinema.All in all I can't recommend this one, but there are a few scenes which are worth to watch and Dirk's personality is just too likable and his contribution to basketball too major to call this picture pointless – which it is from an impartial point of view. (4/10)

A perfect shot for us to see Dirk journey from Germany to the NBA, from a nobody to a most distinguished international player in the league, and all the ups and downs throughout his career. This gave us an introduction of how his style of game is built and has evolved. Also, it depicts every aspect of his life on and off the court, and let us understand him for more than a player from the mouths of every close people around him.The biggest takeaway I would say is "being in" the process and story how Dallas changed Dirk and Dirk changed Dallas by the director's art of work.Definitely a must-see for Dirk's and Dallas Mavericks fans.

If somebody asks me who I would consider the greatest German athlete of the 21st century so far, my answer would be Dirk Nowitzki. He has been among the best of his sport for over a decade now. He is really exceptional in a sport where German are pretty much not featured at all. And as good as the choice was to make him Germany's flag bearer in 2008 for the Olympics, as good is this documentary. Nowitzki is at its core, but we also find out about the most important people in his life, especially a lot about his mentor Holger Gschwindner. Another thing I liked is that it is not exclusively positive, but also tells about the struggles with Nowitzki's former girlfriend and Gschwindner's tax problems. The documentary does not go very deep into detail, but that is perfectly fine. It is a decent summary of Nowitzki's life and career packed in 100 minutes.It focuses mostly on Nowitzki's two NBA finals. good pick here. You cannot speak about each season from such a long career. That would become repetitive pretty quickly. Other than that we find out about his private life a bit, some nice anecdotes about his housekeeping troubles. Occasionally, the film gets a bit too melodramatic and I thought the animation about how Nowitzki paid Gschwindner's bail looked like it came from a student film. However, one needs to dig really deep to find flaws with this movie. It is pretty much told in chronology, which I am usually a fan of too, but that is a personal preference. We get to see interviews with family, friends and comrades on Nowitzki's journey and significant NBA personalities (Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Michael Finley, David Stern, Don Nelson..).Even if you followed Nowitzki's paths the way I did, you will still find out a lot new things, like the way Don Nelson came to Germany to convince Nowitzki to join the Mavericks and how he was surprised there was no huge group of journalists attending him. Finally i would like to say a few words about director Sebastian Dehnhardt, one of Germany's most prolific documentary makers these days. Sports and the Nazi years were probably his two main areas of competence so far. He made several documentaries on football and also one on the Klitschko brothers three years ago. I am not sure if you will get an interest into basketball and the NBA by watching this, if you haven't had one before, but for everybody else Dehnhardt's most recent work here is the perfect film to watch if you want to get in the mood for the new NBA season which is about to begin in a couple weeks.