The Last Dance (2020)- Review

The masterful documentary detailing the decade of dominance from Jordan and his Bulls

The ESPN X Netflix documentary series collaboration retells the glorious final championship season spearheaded by Phil Jackson.

With the best place to start being the flaws, the show itself has received serious criticism from ex players who have since deemed it to be “too much” and some other more rightful claims of it being a little lacking in parts as it doesn’t really cover anything much in depth outside of the basics. Personally I felt the non-linear storytelling was something that became very old and very fast. Only a 10 episode series which is committed to the final season it felt both like filler and somewhat pretentious, and its simply fixed by just changing the approach of the episodes or looking to actively get another series, in such an event you could’ve had a wonderfully rounded tale that covered the whole life of Jordan as an athlete and competitor and give more than one could wish for in terms of detail regarding his more personal side. Not only that, it would’ve made the other “characters” such as Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman more than just supporting individuals, let’s not forget those are hall of fame stars and just as interesting in their own rights. The dynamics and the rest of the spiders web are never explored to the depths they could’ve been and it’s one of the biggest missed opportunities I‘ve Seen on film/TV in a long time.

Furthermore it fails to even paint the massive impact of Jordan’s legacy, something you can definitely see when you watch his eulogy speech for Kobe Bryant, a whole generation of players and people were raised under his shadow and it never quite feels like you truly grasp the mega status of his star.

A little personal gripe, the trailers certainly felt like they miss sold it. From that rolling montage of stars like Justin Timberlake and figures such as Obama etc. Promised more of a mass scale than what was delivered. Furthermore I found a lot of the editing to be horrific and jarring, it lacked a bit of structure that was needed and was a shame.

With that in mind though it’s not all doom and gloom. Visually the archive footage of the 97 season is stunning and honestly I’m one of those sports fans who could quite happily spend the day gushing over these rosey highlights of the past and as a man with a limited knowledge of basketball, learning the stories of these images and seeing it unfold was educational and entertaining.

On top of that as well, the story of the season is exceptional. Dramatic in every possible sense of the word with conflict a plenty and the stuff it does cover is fascinating, be that a glimpse at his film career, the inception of the Jordan brand and so on.

Jordan himself is a truly fascinating and intriguing character and his relationship between him and his peers and the rollercoaster of a career he had make for excellent viewing as accounts of his life and the struggles throughout it.

A documentary that all can enjoy, this is certainly up there with the All or Nothing: Manchester City series as a benchmark sports docu-series and I’d highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Tom Jay