On the South Side, Common wasn’t the only future celebrity who happened to intersect with Mr. Wilson. Also testifying to his charisma and prodigious talent are the singer R. Kelly, who played with him, and the journalist Michael Wilbon and the N.B.A. star Juwan Howard, who were his neighbors.

Image Credit... Associated Press

But the heart of “Benji” is the interviews with friends, teammates and brothers, men in their 40s and 50s whose sadness is subsumed in their eagerness to recall the magic he dispensed on the basketball court. Sitting in what appear to be the living rooms or rec rooms of modest Chicago homes, or driving around the old neighborhood, they lean forward into their memories, summoning quick poetry and humor.

“Anywhere there was a goal, we figured we was allowed there,” says Sean Wright, describing how he and Mr. Wilson ignored gang boundaries in search of a game. “This was what we wanted to be, basketball players, and this is what our city allowed.”

Describing the grace their mother showed after Mr. Wilson’s death, at 17, his older brother Curtis Glenn says: “She handled it like no mother could. She just took it like a man. Or like a strong woman.”

Mr. Simmons and Mr. Ozah mostly let these voices carry the load, throwing in an occasional animated sequence or true-crime-style effect to recreate events. They don’t inject their own voices, but there are implicit critiques of several institutions, including the hospital that did not operate on Mr. Wilson for more than two hours after he was shot. There is also a tickling ambiguity in the film’s treatment of one of its interview subjects, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had a prominent role in the media circus that followed the killing.