Rollerball (1975)

By Zentilack

Summary

In a future where there are no nations, only corporations, a game is played for the amusement and distraction of the population of the world: Rollerball.  Jonathan E. (James Caan) is the best, most popular player to ever enter the ring.  But when mysterious forces try to drive him out of the game, Jonathan wonders who is against him.  Little does he know that this is the first of many dangerous questions that lie before him.

What I Expected

I was aware of the existence of a film called Rollerball, but not much more than that.  I didn't even know who starred in it, or what the premise of the movie was.  When I noticed it on Netflix and checked the description, I wasn't particularly eager to check it out.  Eventually, though, I shrugged my shoulders and watched with a "Why not?" sort of attitude.

The Bad

Oh, geez...Rollerball.  The game for which the movie is named.  The game that drives the plot.  I don't even know where to start.  The movie opens with a Rollerball match and when I saw what it was, well, I'm not sure how to describe it.  Looking at it, it's quite possibly the most absurd sport I've ever heard of after Blernsball (from Futurama).  But while Blernsball is supposed to be funny in an odd sort of way, Rollerball is not.  Let me try to explain.

Each team has a group of players that are either on motorcycles or roller-skates.  They travel around a circular arena while beating the snot out of each other.  All the while the teams try to get a little shiny cannonball and put it in the opponent's goal.  It's like a Frankenstein's Monster of roller-skating, hockey, destruction derby, and mixed martial arts played on an extra large roulette wheel.   Oh, and apparently people die in this game on a fairly regular basis.  I wanted to laugh at this so badly, but the opening credits music (which plays immediately preceding this) is what feels like the entirety of Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor.  I was sitting there, horrified.  They meant for me to take this ridiculous game seriously?  This does not bode well for the film.

Rollerball is fairly long at 125 minutes, and it really could have done with being a bit shorter.  Some scenes are just stretched too thin, going well past the point they should have ended.  I could tell fairly early on that the movie was trying to be profound, in a slow, methodical way.  The script, I think, really could have been tightened up to help keep the parts that were meant to be slower from dragging.

The sound was irritatingly uneven, specifically with the voices.  I don't know if that's just how the movie is or if I was having problems specific to my setup, but I couldn't hear half of what James Caan was saying.  On the other hand, if I turned the volume up to hear him, then the speakers would explode when it cut to the next game or a landing helicopter or whatever.  It is totally unacceptable that I have to turn on the closed captioning just to know what the protagonist is saying when I can hear pretty much everything else just fine.

One of the Japanese Rollerball players (good grief, I'm talking about this stupid game again) seemed completely out of place.  This guy wears glasses.  I don't mean something like those sports glasses that some athletes wear, with the little strap to keep them on your face.  I mean a pair of old school, metal framed, gold colored, square rimmed glasses.  They almost look like my first pair of glasses, back when I was a hopelessly unpopular nerd (I got better).  The point is, why is he wearing these things during an activity that has a 90% chance of you getting hit in the face?  And you know what the really funny thing is?  He's apparently their star player.

The last thing has to do with the cinematography.  While most of it is fairly good, there are a few notable dips in quality.  The opening pans are shaky and just not very interesting.  Later there are moments where the camera, out of nowhere, starts doing quick zooms.  The film looks atrocious when it does this.

The Good

This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but Rollerball.  Yeah, that stupid, absurd game that they play in this movie.  As much as I disliked it in the beginning, it kinda grew on me.  As you see more of the matches you start to pick up on more of the rules of the game, how it's played, and some of the maneuvers they make in the arena.  If they set up a game and broadcast it the way they would a hockey game (minus the death and all), I think people would watch it.  I know, it sounds stupid, but I can't help it.  I actually kinda want to see more Rollerball (the game).

The actors do fairly well, though generally not spectacular.  There's really three exceptions here where we got a nuanced performance.  The first is James Caan as Jonathan.  Though I had to turn on the captions for much of his dialogue, just watching his expressions really helped bridge that gap.  He can be a hard charging player of a rough and tumble sport, but he's capable of giving subtle hints of inner conflict and can express his emotions even in some of his dialogue-free moments.

John Houseman gives weight to the corporate man Bartholomew.  While I didn't recognize him from anything, a brief online search shows his impressive credentials.  Not only did he work with Orson Wells (though they had a falling out), but he taught acting at Juliard and had as his students both Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve.  The last nod goes to Moses Gunn as Jonathan's trainer and friend.  He was nominated for an Emmy for his role in the miniseries Roots.  He put in a solid performance here, and his concern for his friend feels genuine.

The sets and locations are great.  Lots of modern architecture, plenty of space for the characters to move around as they interact with each other.  There's one particular set that made me lean forward when I saw it, and that's Bartholomew's...I don't really know, meditation room?  Whatever it is, it's kind of simple but beautifully made and shot.  At one point the camera strafes around the room as it watches Jonathan and Bartholomew converse.  I actually had to rewind it when I realized I'd missed half the dialogue just looking at the set.

The music is pretty much entirely made up of recognizable classical pieces.  There was the afore mentioned Adagio, as well as music from Bach and Tchaikovsky.  I was really wary of it in the opening since I didn't know the sort of tone the movie was going to set, and there were some odd choices made (I think they just wanted recognizable music), but as it goes on it seems to fit a bit better.  Not perfect, and at times seems a bit pretentious to me, but overall I liked it.

The premise wasn't one that I really expected to find as I went in.  Essentially, Jonathan is coming to realize that the comforts that the corporations give the populace, including himself, have come at the price of freedom.  Everyone else seems to accept the decrees of their leaders as necessary to peace and order, but Jonathan grows more and more discontented with that arrangement, really wanting the freedom to pursue what he loves.  This isn't immediately obvious as the movie begins, but it builds naturally as the story progresses.  I really like this theme.  How much freedom are you willing to give to your rulers in order to have a certain amount of comfort?  How comfortable could it be if deadly Rollerball games are needed to distract the people and show them the futility of individuality?

When a movie is set in the future, it usually goes off the rails in one of two ways: it is too much like our modern culture, or it's too different.  If the characters are just like modern people in weird clothes and set in front of a sci-fi backdrop, it feels fake.  If the characters act like complete aliens then it's really hard to get the audience to identify with and care about what happens to them.

Rollerball actually manages to walk the line in this respect.  They are different, but still recognizable in their actions.  Their outwardly wonderful, almost utopian, society has a tarnished underside that everyone is part of, even if they don't realize it.  The average people seem normal enough until you see them cut loose at a Rollerball game or at a party, and the viewer is shocked at the baseness and depravity of this otherwise clean looking society.  While it was a bit heavy handed in a few places for my taste, I was really impressed at how deep this movie actually got in some parts.

Overall Thoughts

I find myself, once again, in the position of having underestimated a pretty good film.  It's going to bore some people and others won't be able to get over the strange game that the story progression revolves around.  The violence is portrayed rather tamely by today's standards even though what it's trying to get across is pretty brutal.  Still, I have to say that Rollerball won me over.

It's a film that is, honestly, surprisingly relevant today.  It actually makes me wish that they would do a remake, give it some better cinematography, better sound, and better stunts.  In the hands of someone competent, like the guy who directed Die Hard, it could actually be a pretty darn good...

Oh...

Well, okay.  Uh, never mind about that, then.  We'll just stick with Rollerball 1975, shall we?

In all seriousness though, if you want to watch a suprisingly thought provoking (if a tad slow in places) movie, Rollerball is a decent one to try.  I'd say give it a rent.

Unfortunately, it seems like Instant Netflix is going to be taking it off their offerings list on Feb 1.  If you want to buy, you can find it on DVD at Amazon for $12.  The Blu-Ray, as far as I can tell, comes only in a bundle pack with--ugh--the 2002 remake.