Rollerball (2002)

[Neville]

When you reach a certain age (I'm 29, by the way) you learn to fear some of the latest trends in action movies. It must be one of the stupidest ways of measuring age, but there it is. For some reason of another, I hate some of the traits that lately have become inherent to any action movie that considers itself trendy, such as shaky cam, shots that last less than two seconds, coreography substituted by agressive editing, loud music that tries to affect the viewing experience...

I mention this because John McTiernan's remake of "Rollerball" is either the epitome of this trashy new race of action movies or, on the contrary, its more malevolent, brutal parody. It has almost everything, apart from the elements mentioned, like a terrible casting of non-actors, an screenplay that seems to feel a personal hate for anything remotely resembling content, a buffoonish villain (Jean Reno) and so on.

What worries me, is, is it for real or is it a parody? Is McTiernan, one of the last masters in helming good, traditional action movies, selling himself or has he transformed the original film, which satirized sports as opium for the masses, into a parody of the same industry that has made it possible?

It's a question that is likely to remain unresolved, but something tells me that McTiernan, known for its meticulose use of editing and framing, was aiming for a parody but somehow failed. There's something in the way he handles the rollerball games that suggests he is in control: despite fast editing, events are easy to follow, despite what seems senseless framing and crude use of illumination you can tell he knows what he is doing. And the occasional action outside the rollerball arena is equally estrident, like a chase filmed in shades of green, as if to suggest night vision. But the plain truth is that when the games are not there to keep the adrenaline rushing the film falls absolutely flat, since the chracters are cartoonish and the mechanics of the plot behind the games are quite predictable.

So, are the rollerball games a way of criticising the circus that some action films have made of the genre or just the last example of the trend? I don't know. Really. But I have to say that meanwhile I was trying to find out I didn't feel cheated or bored, and that, maligned as it was at the moment of its release, this film is not worse than many others which have triumphed at the box office, and, this might be the ultimate irony, much more entertainning than the original.



Angered with the film's reception, Jean Reno procedes to murder his agent.

[odinn7]

Neville Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When you reach a certain age (I'm 29, by the way)
> you learn to fear some of the latest trends in
> action movies. It must be one of the stupidest
> ways of measuring age, but there it is. For some
> reason of another, I hate some of the traits that
> lately have become inherent to any action movie
> that considers itself trendy, such as shaky cam,
> shots that last less than two seconds, coreography
> substituted by agressive editing, loud music that
> tries to affect the viewing experience...


I couldn't agree with you more. I hate the way this is done now. I think back to some older films and how they would have been destroyed if they were doing things like this back then. Imagine the Terminator or Road Warrior done like this...it hurts.

[Shadowphile]

Save me from a politically correct remake of Road Warrior.  It would be like Driving Miss Daisy with guns.....

[Ash]

I couldn't even finish this movie.
After watching about 20 minutes of it, I actually took it back to the video store and lied to the clerk telling him there was something wrong with the disc.
He let me rent something else.

I had never done that before until then.
It really was that bad!

Ebert especially hated this film, giving it only a half a star out of four.
Read his review here

[dean]

Terrible film, with terrible action and terrible actors.  So much potential for a fun movie, but so poorly executed.

Actually to answer Neville's question about whether or not it's a parody, that really is a tough idea, mainly because it may very well have set itself out as a parody, but fails so miserably it comes off as a cheap, poorly made movie.

[Neville]

Well, I really have no other explanation for McTiernan's unexpected change of style and camerawork. Actually, that's not true,  I do, but I don't wat to believe he's switched brains with Renny Harlin.

And you're right anout it, dean. If he was aiming for a parody he became too entangled in what he wanted to satirize and the whole thing backfired into him.

[Fearless Freep]

Any worse than Futuresport?

[Gerry]

One of the most painful movies it has ever been my dis-pleasure to review.  Awful:

Gerry's review of ROLLERBALL (2002)

[Neville]

Can't read that review, Gerry. Is it me or the site is down? :-(

[Gerry]

Not sure, but the link works for me.  ??

[dean]

Ah Futuresport.  I actually liked Futuresport, especially in comparison to Rollerball, which really is saying how bad Rollerball is.

Especially since I saw Futuresport before Rollerball, and without realising there was an original Rollerball, thought the remake was a rip off of Futuresport.

So you can imagine how confused I was that somebody was ripping off a Dean Cain movie...

[Yaddo 42]

When I first heard of "Futuresport" I knew there was a "Rollerball" remake in the pipeline, found myself saying "Did they rush it through and do it on the cheap?"

I've seen the remake in pieces on TV, USA was showing it a lot at odd hours in the months before I moved. Just seemed like yet another "edited in a blender, MTV meets X Games-style" action movie. Maybe McTiernan was trying show studio he could direct in this style to prove his worth with studios in an age when even the directors are often ridiculously young or have built their early careers in commercials and videos. Maybe the studio or producers told him to "direct it like Michael Bay, whether it makes sense or not".

I just hate that movie took the outlaw sports league looking for the big pay day path rather than updating the themes of the original. I always thought the original was an interesting failure, but many of the ideas it bungled would have been interesting to see in a remake. The global conglomerates controlling the world and all aspects of society (What happens to unporfitable regions of the world?); the end of nation-states and some cities; rabid sports fans; sports leagues ruthlessly changing rules to amp up the action or worse (shades of NASCAR's ever changing rules); the power, influence, isolation, and compromise of celebrity, the devaluing of history and information, etc.

[Fearless Freep]

So you can imagine how confused I was that somebody was ripping off a Dean Cain movie...


*shudder*

[The Burgomaster]

I think I'd rather watch ROLLER BOOGIE with Linda Blair.

[Neville]

...nobody defends Prayer of the rollerboys? I found it sort of fun, in a goofy way.