Rollerball

Starring: Chris Klein, LL Cool J, Jean Reno, Rebecca Romijn, Naveen Andrews
Directed by: John McTiernan
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
2002

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: In the near future, athletes participate in rollerball- a dangerous game whose owners will stop at nothing for increased ratings.

Review:

Tim: Where should I begin with how bad Rollerball is? There's really an extremely long laundry list of problems with this movie. I have no idea how director John McTiernan could have put together such a terrible film. It was almost as if he wasn't even trying. The cast seems to realize they are in a stinker as well. Overall, this movie sucks.

The plot is completely ridiculous. I felt like so much of the movie was spent watching a character see something off in the distance, almost in slow motion. It was just so odd (seriously, watch for this, it's weird). The story is a mix of sports entertainment, and your typical cliches like owners caring only about ratings, blah blah blah. The whole thing is completely and totally absurd. There are gigantic plots holes throughout the entire film. It really felt like those involved purposely wanted this to fail. How else can you explain such garbage?

Chris Klein should never have been in the lead role. Besides looking the part of the all American athlete (kind of), he's just not a very convincing actor at all. I rooted for him purely because there wasn't anything else to hold my attention in this film. LL Cool J is a nice addition to the cast. Even when in a disaster of a movie, I feel like he always tries hard, and I appreciate that. Rebecca Romijn felt wasted in this film, as she has nothing of real substance to do. Jean Reno was a bit too over-the-top for my taste. I did like seeing Naveen Andrews in the film. It was hard for me to judge the quality of the acting, because everything is awful in this film. From what I could see though, the acting isn't very good.

I felt completely disengaged throughout the whole movie. There was very little to hold my attention, especially after the first half hour. One of the worst scenes has to the be the night vision scene. I just didn't understand why we were seeing things in night vision- whose perspective was this from? Maybe I missed it, but it seemed absurd. That's not to mention the "boing" sound effect, which completely boggles my mind. Why was this in there? It makes no sense, and the only explanation I can come up with is that no one cared enough to fix it. It was at this point that I completely gave up on the film.

In an effort to be positive, I will say that the opening rollerball game is pretty decent. This is before we recognize what a pile of trash the whole movie is. It was fairly interesting and featured some good futurisitic sports moments. It was surprisingly long. That scene was the highlight of the movie for me. Unfortunately, from there, it just went downhill.

Rollerball is a broken, flawed movie on almost every level. I'm probably being too kind with my rating, but I still can't stress how poor this movie is. I feel like my brain was fried a bit watching this illogical, stupid movie. This is clearly not the best review I've ever written, and I blame this movie on that. I'm going to sign off, but I want to reiterate how terrible this movie is.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend:
Rollerball (1975)