Rollerball is one long smorgasbord of smash-ups, crashes and body blows. It's a big mess of a movie that fails to establish strong characters or to set up a logical design of the dangerous sport the characters participate in. The guilty party for this disaster is director John McTiernan, who previously has been reliable with such strong and intelligent action-adventure movies like Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October and The Thomas Crown Affair. What was he thinking?
For those unfamiliar with the 1975 version of Rollerball with James Caan, this film will be especially difficult to follow. Watching the original film before seeing this remake is essential because the old version plays like Cliff Notes in order to follow the action. The original movie wasn't a great film but at least it established interesting ideas about corporation rule in a futuristic society which operated in totalitarian rule under CEO's. This film attempts to satirize the extent producers will go for television ratings. In the original film, the game of rollerball was a fusion of hockey, football and motocross with gladiator brutality. This time the game is interrupted by constant cutting with complete absence of clarity and the arena is so small that it's claustrophobic mayhem instead of having a big arena with competitive design like in Norman Jewison's original film.
What's worse is that the casting is all wrong. Chris Klein is too baby-faced and non-threatening to play Jonathan Cross, the athlete that becomes a hero for the masses while challenging the integrity of the game. LL Cool J is his teammate Marcus Ridley that wants to help Cross get out of the game once it starts getting deadly in the arena. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays the love interest to Jonathan and scarred teammate in this unisex sport. Jean Reno plays the evil executive owner of this dangerous sport league, doing little but snicker from his owner's box seat or shouting incomprehensibly at his lackies.
The history behind this troubled production is revealing. Director John McTiernan in the spring of 2001 invited online critic Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News to take a look at an early screening. Despite being an admirer of the modern action film, he simply stated it sucked and bad buzz leaked everywhere. The film was pushed from an August release so the filmmakers could work on its problems. The studio was concerned with its length of two hours and about the incoherence of the action. McTiernan returned behind the camera in the fall to shoot additional scenes for two weeks. What is evident is that additional photography could not clear anything up, not with the mess of earlier footage that could be assimilated in the editing. The running time was cut, and with a reported $60 million running tag, the film's blood and gore was cut to insure a PG-13 rating. Luring young teenagers into this fiasco was the studio's only chance to make their money back. The final edit remains a muddled, and discreetly tame, work of shame.
There is constant noise on the soundtrack, the pacing is as reckless and frenetic as a bad video game and with constant attention to overlong action scenes, this lends to little character development. The game itself is so burdened by the suffocated design of the arena, so incoherent and undefined in athletic contest that it would more logically crumble faster than the XFL.
For those unfamiliar with the 1975 version of Rollerball with James Caan, this film will be especially difficult to follow. Watching the original film before seeing this remake is essential because the old version plays like Cliff Notes in order to follow the action. The original movie wasn't a great film but at least it established interesting ideas about corporation rule in a futuristic society which operated in totalitarian rule under CEO's. This film attempts to satirize the extent producers will go for television ratings. In the original film, the game of rollerball was a fusion of hockey, football and motocross with gladiator brutality. This time the game is interrupted by constant cutting with complete absence of clarity and the arena is so small that it's claustrophobic mayhem instead of having a big arena with competitive design like in Norman Jewison's original film.
What's worse is that the casting is all wrong. Chris Klein is too baby-faced and non-threatening to play Jonathan Cross, the athlete that becomes a hero for the masses while challenging the integrity of the game. LL Cool J is his teammate Marcus Ridley that wants to help Cross get out of the game once it starts getting deadly in the arena. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays the love interest to Jonathan and scarred teammate in this unisex sport. Jean Reno plays the evil executive owner of this dangerous sport league, doing little but snicker from his owner's box seat or shouting incomprehensibly at his lackies.
The history behind this troubled production is revealing. Director John McTiernan in the spring of 2001 invited online critic Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News to take a look at an early screening. Despite being an admirer of the modern action film, he simply stated it sucked and bad buzz leaked everywhere. The film was pushed from an August release so the filmmakers could work on its problems. The studio was concerned with its length of two hours and about the incoherence of the action. McTiernan returned behind the camera in the fall to shoot additional scenes for two weeks. What is evident is that additional photography could not clear anything up, not with the mess of earlier footage that could be assimilated in the editing. The running time was cut, and with a reported $60 million running tag, the film's blood and gore was cut to insure a PG-13 rating. Luring young teenagers into this fiasco was the studio's only chance to make their money back. The final edit remains a muddled, and discreetly tame, work of shame.
There is constant noise on the soundtrack, the pacing is as reckless and frenetic as a bad video game and with constant attention to overlong action scenes, this lends to little character development. The game itself is so burdened by the suffocated design of the arena, so incoherent and undefined in athletic contest that it would more logically crumble faster than the XFL.