‘Unfinished Business’ Review: Skimming the Surface of Women’s Basketball

This documentary about skilled girls’s basketball retains toggling between two topics so large, every might simply fill a whole collection: the W.N.B.A. and considered one of its founding groups, the New York Liberty. The title refers each to the league’s fixed battle for recognition since its creation in 1996 and the Liberty’s fruitless (thus far) quest for a title. But “unfinished business” additionally describes this scattershot movie, which is directed by Alison Klayman (“The Brink,” “Jagged”).

The greatest asset right here, as with the W.N.B.A., is the roster of formidable girls. Most of the speaking heads are effortlessly charismatic, particularly the guard Teresa Weatherspoon, who led the Liberty’s early years, and the 2021 rookie DiDi Richards. The first anchors reminiscences concerning the Nineteen Nineties and the second is a part of the trouble to recuperate from an abysmal 2-20 season in 2020. (The Liberty’s governor and co-owner Clara Wu Tsai is among the documentary’s govt producers.)

Aside from nail-biters from traditional video games, the movie is hampered by elusions and little sense of drama — Klayman might have mined the Liberty’s rivalry with the Houston Comets far more successfully, for instance. And for all of the speak concerning the obstacles girls face in skilled sports activities, together with sexism and homophobia, there isn’t a point out of the contentious appointment of Isiah Thomas, who had been sued for sexual harassment when he labored for the Knicks, as Liberty crew president in 2015.

It’s exhausting to begrudge “Unfinished Business” for emphasizing empowerment and sisterhood, however these girls deserved extra. They can take it.

Unfinished Business
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour half-hour. In theaters and out there on Amazon Prime Video.