You Don't Know Bo
You Don't Know Bo
| 08 December 2012 (USA)
You Don't Know Bo Trailers

A close look at two-sport athlete Bo Jackson and the creation of a legend. Even without winning a Super Bowl or World Series, Bo will forever be known as a cultural icon and one of the most famous athletes of all time. This film will examine the truths and tall tales that surround Jackson, and how his seemingly impossible feats captured our collective imagination for an all-too-brief moment in time.

Reviews
Woodyanders

Bo Jackson was an exceptionally gifted and versatile athlete who was able to achieve iconic status playing both baseball and football alike in the late 1980's and early 1990's. This documentary does an excellent and affecting job of showing the man behind the large than life figure: Starting with his humble beginnings growing up poor in a small town in Alabama as an angry kid with a stutter (Bo would latter channel this anger into sports), then focusing on how he did track, baseball, and football in high school before going to college, and finally dwelling on how Bo became a beloved and ubiquitous individual due to the fact that he played (and excelled at) two sports with the Nike campaign cementing his super star status, one really gets a sense of what made Bo so remarkable back in the day (Bo's aptitude as an incredibly fast runner in particular gets addressed at length). Moreover, Bo himself comes across as a really modest, likable, and down to earth guy: He talks about his extraordinary athletic achievements in a disarmingly matter of fact manner and never seems remotely smug or arrogant, which makes it all the more poignant and devastating after a brutal hip injury abruptly curtailed his career as a professional football player (although to Bo's everlasting credit he did resume playing baseball in the wake of undergoing an extremely grueling rehabilitation process after having his damaged hip replaced). Although Bo never made it into either sport's Hall of Fame, he nonetheless left behind an impressive legacy just the same. A fine and illuminating portrait of a great athlete.

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dgonset

Director uses his-self as an "Expert" on Bo. Should have probably spent more time behind the camera. I love the 30 for 30 series and was excited to watch the Bo Jackson episode as the man was a movement in his day and to some extent his movement still carries on. With regards to this documentary, the expert opinions were overdone. It was a nice roster but it draws away from the reason we tuned in. To focus on the movement rather than the reason why the movement surrounding Bo Jackson was successful is to do Bo an injustice. Here was an athlete that was so gifted at such a high level that he excelled above other pros in not one but two different professional sports. The funny thing about this documentary is that much of the focus was on the phenomena that was Bo Jackson but we get little of WHY he was so great. Nike knew that all they had to do is focus on Bo's greatness and then show the shoe and sell the shoe by drawing similarities. The Nike employees even explain that in the documentary! The director decided to go heavy on expert opinions and ignore an already proved path! Give the people what they want! Keep your expert opinions to yourself! If I wanted to get someone's so called professional input on a football/baseball player id prob want it from someone who has something to do with sportsThat being said, based on the subject you can't say it isn't worth the 5 stars I gave. Def Wanted to give more, def expected more

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mailhdot

Bo Jackson's story deserves a feature-length film. This documentary is very well done, but it left me wanting to see more.I saw Bo do things that most people would think are impossible feats. There was the time when he outran a group of challengers who had as much as a 30-yard head start in a foot race from one end of Auburn's football field to the other. I also saw Bo at bat one day when some of rival University of Alabama fans were hurling ice and racial epithets at him from behind the backstop. Bo turned around, smiled and waved at the hecklers, and then hit a tremendous home run that sounded like a Howitzer going off. I also saw him with tears running down his cheeks after visiting his dying mother at UAB hospital in Birmingham. For all of his blessings, he is still as mortal as the rest of us are. He really is a fine human being in addition to being the greatest athlete to ever walk this planet.

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Michael_Elliott

30 for 30: You Don't Know Bo (2012) **** (out of 4) Another excellent entry in the ESPN series, this one here taking a look at the quick career of Bo Jackson who managed to become a star in both MLB and the NFL. Teammates, former coaches and other commentators talk about the impact that Jackson had through high school, college and then eventually in the professional leagues. A very good comments is mentioned that Jackson has pretty much been overlooked because he never set any records, won any major awards in the pros and there are very few clips of him seen today. The speaker goes on to say that you really had to be living in that period to get the full impact of what Jackson did and I think this is true but this wonderful documentary really lets people know who wasn't there what this man accomplished and what he could have done had he not been injured so badly. The documentary really does a fantastic job at reminding people of what a talent Jackson was and the viewer really gets a great idea of what that period was like. The marketing side of Jackson is also discussed in great detail and what he did for Nike is just as impressive as his playing career. Some of the best moments come from Jackson himself who talks about his career and we get an incredibly sad sequence where he talks about his first hit for his mother who had recently passed away.

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