"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Rollerball (2002)

Well once again the conventional wisdom turns out to be right. You would think that as dumb as a movie like this would probaly be, it might be enjoyable. Well, I would think that. But I would be wrong.

I’ve never seen the original, and I always meant to. I understand that it is kind of a satire of sports and american society’s thirst for violent entertainment. The great DEATH RACE 2000 was made to cash in on the same themes but is generally considered to be better. Anyway the approach that John McTiernan, the director of DIE MOTHERFUCKIN HARD 1 & 3, took was to set it in pretty much the present, since wrestling and ultimate fighting become more ridiculous and lurid than anything filmatists of the ’70s could’ve imagined. But there really aren’t new points to be made here.

RollerballI mean talk about weak stick it to the man moments. There is a part where a character gets in a bad motorcycle accident. Cut back to the obnoxious commentator (taken from an actual wrestling league I believe) and he sits in stunned, respectful silence. In another scene he is reading off a set of last minute changes to the rules, designed to endanger the lives of the athletes. Right in the middle he says, “This is bullshit!” Gimme a fuckin break.

The idea is that the sinister millionaire owner played by Jean Reno deliberately tries to have the athletes killed or maimed in the name of ratings. Inside the arena they have a real-time global ratings monitor which goes up significantly every time somebody gets hurt. As if all around the world, people with Nielsen boxes magically sense motorcycle accidents, turn it to ESPN2 for a few moments and then turn it off until it happens again.

The #1 problem of the movie is the casting of Chris Klein as Keanu Reeves. Now, I liked the dude in other movies. Apparently Alexander Payne saw him in a real high school while scouting for ELECTION and cast him to play the kind but moronic jock Paul Metzler. He was so perfect for the role of himself that they cast him as himself in the American Pie pictures. And by chance he looked like a slightly buffer Keanu Reeves, so suddenly he’s starring in a big action picture.

The problem is you can’t just grab some kid out of a high school hallway and turn him into Bruce Willis. He worked playing a dumb kid because everything he says sounds dumb. He has no idea how to deliver this dialogue convincingly, and when he tries anything different from a flat reading he comes off looking like a complete jackass. He is not ready to play a hero who has to come up with ideas, figure things out, and have confrontations with people.

Remember when I said SNATCH was a hollow remake of LOCK, STOCK AND ET AL, which was already devoid of substance? Well Chris Klein is SNATCH to Keanu’s LOCK STOCK.

The next problem is the Rollerball itself. If you had some idea of the rules of the game you’d be able to have some kind of suspense during the numerous game scenes. But I have no fuckin clue how it’s supposed to work. It has something to do with rollerskating, but sometimes they ride motorcycles. About halfway through the movie I noticed that they had a ball that they tried to throw against a metal thing. That was when I realized why it was called rollerBALL. Turns out there is something to do with a ball.

I fuckin dare John McTiernan, Chris Klein, LL Cool J or anyone involved in this movie to explain the rules of Rollerball. No fair checking the old movie.

And are they fake or are they real? The announcers give the protagonists fake backgrounds. When LL Cool J gets killed (spoiler) they claim he just got a virus during a south american archaelogical expedition and never deal with the ramifications of him being gone. They say Chris Klein was a pro hockey player even though he wasn’t, etc. So it’s all fake, right? But then for some reason the “bad guy” characters really threaten and try to hurt them while they’re playing, or rollerskating, or motorcycle riding, or whatever in fuck’s name they are trying to do, although I’m pretty sure they’re not really trying to do anything.

LL Cool J is the only one in the movie with charisma. Unless you count Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (the naked blue chick from X-Men) who has her hair dyed black, a scar on her face and talks in a Boris and Natasha accent. In case that doesn’t tip you off that she’s russian, they give her a giant fur hat. But she’s still not silly enough to be entertaining. Everyone plays it real serious, except maybe Jean Reno who continues to jeopardize his career by hamming it up in bad american summer movies.

The closest thing to McTiernan trying something interesting is that there is one long chase scene that is black and white tinted green. It looks like a security camera. I’m not sure why they did that.

Remember when this came out, and you didn’t bother to see it? Yeah, you had the right idea.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2002 at 10:59 am and is filed under Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Rollerball (2002)”

  1. Just watched this out of morbid curiosity wondering if it had gotten better over time. It didn’t. This movie is absolutely laughable. Ebert had it right when he said watching this is like staring into a kaleidoscope for 90 minutes. It’s a complete mess of a movie. Something must have gone horribly wrong during production. Chris Klein (the broke man’s Keanu Reeves) has some of the worst line readings of all time. The half hour sequence (at least it felt that way) shot completely in night vision is absolutely ridiculous. Did they run out of money and decided to cover it up by shooting it in night vision? Its also laughable that they treat Romijn-Stamos-O’Connell like some kind of deformed mutant because she has one little scar near her eye. Never mind that the other 99.9% of her looks like a supermodel. You got good ole Jean Reno hamming it up in the worst way possible, obvious wire work (roller wire fu?), clumsy social commentary, a ridiculous ending that i guess is supposed to be a happy one, the list goes on and on. You could write a book about everything that’s wrong with this one. There has to be some kind of production nightmare story behind this film. I refuse to believe that this is the movie that McTiernan wanted to make from day 1.

  2. Chalk this one up as yet another in the long, long line of remakes that should never have even been considered, much less funded, filmed and released to torment the movie audience.

    The original is very good, Vern. It’s not a fast-paced actioner, by any means, but if you dig ’70s (pre-Star Wars) sci-fi, you might like it.

  3. I believe John Mctiernan was screwed right from the beginning, i mean did he really CHOOSE Chris “Dumb Fuck’ Klein as a lead? GTFOH!
    Plus McT had numerous issues with the producers trying to short change him and the original script was vastly different to the released film. I remember there being a very early teaser for the film where it proclaimed something about “Future Wars not being played out in the open But being played inside a ring with a metal ball”? I swear i saw some thing like that? so yeah the films was vastly changed, refilmed and edited without his permission. The producers fucked him royally.

    I really don’t blame McT at all, his directorial flourishes are still present inc dolly zooms, fluid steadicam shots and stunning action beats but the picture overall leaves so much out that it could have been a much better film with a better lead and the original directors vision intact.

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