Rollerball

Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Screenplay by Larry Ferguson and Jon Pogue
Based on a short story and screenplay by William Harrison
Directed by John McTiernan
website: www.rollerball.com

IN SHORT: More like foul ball. [Rated PG-13 for violence, extreme sports action, sensuality, language and some drug references. 87 minutes]

We're not old enough to remember James Caan in the original Rollerball while it was a first run film. We were long out of film school and so never drooled over the video box containing the hit original. For our purposes, as always, you shouldn't have to know the Source Material to "get" the film and, in this particular case, you don't. Points to Rollerball v.2's creators for that.

More points for a very cool title sequence in which Jonathan Cross (Chris Klein) and a friend race down the hilly streets of San Francisco on skateboards. With no brakes, there's only two ways for those things to stop. The other involves a long-time friend pulling up in a very fast car. Marcus Ridley (LL Cool J) is the friend and the offer he brings presents the opportunity to make incredible amounts of money playing the internationally syndicated game called Rollerball. Doing so gets Jon away from the police that are hunting him down for being too free a spirit <g> but it also means leaving the States for Kasachstan, just south of Russia, where the locals spend six and a half days each week in the mines and the Gaming commission isn't so strict about things like the Rules.

Those rules are explained early, so pay attention, because very little in John McTiernan's construction of this film gives you any grip on the strategies of the game -- involving skaters and motorcyclists on a figure 8 shaped track -- or why it is so popular since, in its "pure" form it it doesn't come across as athletically interesting. Perhaps that is why Rollerball isn't a big league attraction on our shores. More important to the story is the fact that, unlike the NHL to which JC aspired, the co-ed Rollerball league affords him the opportunity to play with girls both on the rink and, when no one in authority is looking, in the locker room. His femme of choice is teammate Aurora (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), the most attractive player around, though the relationship violates league rules and so is kept secret. With best friend and love interest in place, we proceed to the real story, something akin to athletic slavery.

It isn't that the promoter bad guy, named Petrovich (Jean Reno), is a whip-cracking, bloodthirsty lout. He likes a clean game. He likes the rules. He's made his players famous and rich. He also knows that his sport lives or dies by the TV ratings, which had been falling like a lead weight. When one players suffers a critical head injury, the sight of blood on the track makes the ratings spurt, so little is done to keep the other players from kicking the physical interaction up a couple of notches. Petrovich is waiting on a big TV contract and, when our trio of heroes is tipped to the fact that the aforementioned "accident" wasn't exactly accidental, our big bad promoter is forced to take all actions necessary to keep his stars from bolting the league.

There's more. Some good. Some coming from totally underdeveloped areas of the script's backstory. There is death and there are threats but there isn't enough character development for us to really give a damn and there isn't enough action to distract us from weak characters. Rollerball doesn't seem to know what kind of story it wants to be: A story of competition (though that's put out of the way quickly) or a thriller or a story of love and friendship and the powers of the almighty cable networks or some combination of all of the above. Sure, Petrovich is stoked by high ratings and isn't beyond fixing a match to get 'em, but Reno delivers a bad guy who is far too subtle for us to cheer his downfall. By the time he makes his evil intentions clear, we were beyond caring. As for our Hero, he's the best that he can be. Best player. Best friend. Best lover. When you add all that up you get a thoroughly boring person. Sure, he's willing to do what is necessary to protect his friends but the eventual resolution did nothing for us. There are many movies that are, at their core, about (men) versus the system. Rollerball is yet another one and it isn't particularly gripping.

There is more fun in watching supporting characters Ridley and Aurora run through their paces and plots than in waiting for Chris Klein to emanate true star and/or hero power. We've liked Klein's other work but Rollerball left us cold.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Nine Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Rollerball, he would have paid . . .

$3.00

rent.

	Click to buy films by John McTiernan
	Click to buy films starring Chris Klein
	Click to buy films starring Jean Reno

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