"Rollerball" is deplorable. As a film it is inexcusably bad, insulting to people who live in the old Soviet republics and completely lacking in a meaningful plot. Events in the story are inconsistent, the character behavior is unexplainable and the action is neutered by poor direction.
The latest release from Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, "Rollerball" actually is a remake of a 1975 movie starring James Caan. The earlier film, though pedestrian, had much more character and purpose than this modern remake. Aware of the more dated movie, viewers are left to wonder how John McTiernan, who also directed "Die Hard," could produce something so incoherent and unimaginative. One simply must conclude that there was not enough footage to make a bona-fide movie, since the extra year needed for "extensive re-editing" did not help the film gel into anything meaningful.
Set in Kazakhstan in 2005, "Rollerball" tells the story of Jonathan Cross (Chris Klein), a hotshot from Texas who can't seem to earn a living doing anything requiring athletic ability. While competing in an illegal street luge match for $250, he happens to bump into his good friend Marcus Ridley (LL Cool J), whom he hasn't seen in months. Ridley is the first introduction to a long string of phony characters.
Ridley informs Cross about the money he could rake in overseas as a member of the Rollerball league, which is composed of teams representing a variety of central Asian countries. Once there, he will pick up a nice signing bonus, get to play around with weird Russian chicks and drive expensive cars doled out by team owner Petrovich (Jean Reno). Little does Ridley realize that Russian mobsters, who increase ratings by instigating dangerous events during the competitions, operate the teams.
Any merit the film might have had at the beginning disappears when the characters actually start playing Rollerball. Poorly shot action sequences and completely irrelevant rules completely destroy the movie. Frankly, it looked as though there were no rules in the game at all, but I guess there must have been, since the owners decided to suspend them in the final round of the game.
Paul Heyman plays the announcer covering the games in English and it largely falls on him to make viewers believe the events are at all exciting. He fails miserably - his scenes become increasingly ridiculous as viewers realize that often he makes an aside to someone else in the booth when it is perfectly obvious he is alone.
The plot was shallow and made no attempt at suspense. Viewers cannot possibly be shocked to discover the owners' violent schemes - these segments only paid lip service to a story. The villains are not allowed to be businessmen, only greedy thugs.
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Rebecca Romijn-Stamos stars as Aurora, a Russian rollerblading chick who manages to be cute and tough at the same time. She serves mainly to introduce us briefly to impoverished Russians affiliated with the working class and in some way oppressed by the mobsters. But viewers (of course) don't really get to know anything about that because it was not developed.
This moronic underclass can never bring itself to stop betting on the competitions. Honestly, one can only assume they place bets because their lives would be too boring otherwise, but again, no answers are provided. At the end of the movie, after viewers have known the truth for over an hour, they manage to see through the owners' facade. Bravo.
Modern viewers are left wondering why it in fact makes better business sense to kill off team members rather than to develop a sport with integrity. Again, no answers are forthcoming. Not so subtly, there's a little green digital counter that says "Ratings," and that tends to go up whenever one of the competitors gets hurt. Again and again, "Rollerball" proves a wonderful assessment of spectator values.
"Rollerball" may in fact do well in European markets, assuming that is who it was intended for. But if I was insulted by this film as an American, I only can apologize ahead of time to any Russians who will feel even more misunderstood after watching the movie.
If this assessment of the film is not disparaging enough to dissuade you from seeing it, you can ask the seven undergraduates who were seated directly behind me. At the end, they all applauded in disdain, each having a sardonic comment to throw in. "So, whose idea was it to see this stupid movie, anyway"
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