Rollerball |
  • UK / USA / Canada • 1975 • 125m •    • Directed by: Norman Jewison. • Starring: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Pamela Hensley, Barbara Trentham, John Normington, Shane Rimmer, Burt Kwouk, Nancy Bleier, Richard LeParmentier, Robert Ito. • Music by: André Previn.      The year is 2018. There is no crime and there are no more wars. Corporations are now the leaders of the world, as well as the controllers of the people. A violent futuristic game known as Rollerball is now the recreational sport of the world, with teams representing various areas competing for the title of champion. The defending championship team, the Houston team led by the determined ten-year veteran Johnathan E., are looking to repeat as champions. However, Bartholomew, the sinister corporate head, wants Johnathan to retire, even though he is the most respected athlete of his time. Johnathan's rebellious quest will not come out with complications, both for him and his teammates, after he decides to continue playing despite Bartholomew's threats.
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Review:
"Rollerball" is one of those exciting benchmark films for those of us who are male and grew up in the 1970s. What could have been cooler than big burly guys in studded leather gloves driving chrome-plated motorbikes and smashing into each other in a roller rink while chasing a giant pinball? How about setting it in the not-too-distant future? Wicked!
I wish I could say "Rollerball" is a wicked film still. To start with the best part, the stunt work and camera work in the arena are crisp and sharp, visceral to the point of having you standing up and cheering along when Jonathan E. bashes in the face of a Toyko opponent. The idea of remaking "Rollerball" a few years ago with better special effects was ridiculous when one realizes the live-action footage we see here in the original would trump anything CGI can cook up. It's real and ungainly action, the kind you see in the last quarter of a tough Monday Night Football game, and it works.
The problem with "Rollerball" is everything else. Not the idea of a corporate-dominated world where individuality is discouraged; that's an arresting dystopian concept even if it's delivered ham-fistedly by director Norman Jewison. What's really at fault is a lack of engagement when it comes to the characters. That Rollerball is such a brutal sport is made abundantly clear in the first game, but we don't get a sense of anyone's compensating humanity that would allow us to root for them. Jonathan doesn't seem bothered by anyone being injured, while his teammate Moonpie is just a thick-headed thug. It's hard to care about the movie when you don't care about the people in it.
John Houseman makes for a weird heavy, especially in the opening scene where he passes out psychotropic Tic-Tacs and makes strangely leering comments like a high-school coach who likes hanging out in the boys' locker room too much. That might be interesting if it, or anything else unusual, was pursued, but it isn't. I get that he's corporate and corrupt, but there's no real logic behind his demands that Jonathan, his star player, retire before the end of the season. With only two post-season games left? That's like Shaq dropping out before the NBA Semis. Maybe there's a fear Jonathan represents something scary and alien to the system, as is posited by many other posters here, and Houseman's Bartholomew character wants him to quit so he will be disgraced. But Jonathan doesn't grab me as the iconoclastic John McEnroe or Muhummad Ali type, even though he seems to have the makings for a real grudge when they took his wife away. Instead he kind of goes along with just about everything that's presented to him, until they make this unrealistic demand he suddenly retire.
Drop-dead Maud Adams is haunting as the wife, Ella, a woman who doesn't really seem to care about the pain Jonathan felt from losing her (she left voluntarily, to remarry an engineer in Rome). She's not evil, unlike another female character named Daphne played well by Barbara Trentham. Rather, Ella speaks for the status quo, telling Jonathan that the society is good because it provides security and leisure. For all her radiant beauty, and sympathetic understanding for her ex, you kind of understand it and like it when Jonathan responds to her defense of the system, and her appeal for him to quit, by erasing her videotaped image on the wall.
There's another nice scene in "Rollerball" where Jonathan explains how the game works and shows up a cocky rookie in a winning, low-key style. But that points up another weakness of the movie, Jonathan's inarticulateness outside of the arena. If you want your film to explore deep concepts, you either need a better plot or a protagonist who can throw up the occasional two-syllable word. Jewison seemed to go overboard in making Jonathan a dumb jock, to the point where it cuts down on James Caan's considerable charisma. Obviously the director was influenced by Caan's performance as a football player in "Brian's Song," but there Caan's character had cancer, which would dampen anyone's personality. Here Jonathan seems like a guy whose interested only in male-bonding and inflicting pain. No wonder Maud left him. Why we are supposed to stick with him is a mystery.
Review by Bill Slocum from the Internet Movie Database.
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