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Rollerball (1975)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Behind the vision of a future society, where the corporate world state controls the bloodlust of the populace through lethal games of rollerball, lies the familiar theme of individual struggle: Caan's champ takes on the grey eminence who wants to force his retirement. The script grapples with notions of freedom and privilege, but finally remains too oblique to throw much light either on our own society or on our possible future. Occasionally, though, insight triumphs, and Caan's struggle towards articulation remains one of the film's strong points. Otherwise, its main interest lies in the tensions generated by the gap between the script's intellectual aspirations and the gut reaction appeal of the games, which are highly physical and brutal. Hence, a group of drunken revellers deliberately and callously burning down some old fir trees makes more impression than all the destruction of human meat in the games. Ultimately, Rollerball gets by on its sheer monolithic quality - an abundance of quantity. Despite indifferent direction and dire humour, it is well mounted and photographed.

Author: CPe

Time Out Film Guide

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TR said...

Posted on Dec 21 2009 01:43 A review I wrote for a competition a few months ago - seems a shame not post it, apologies if it covers any of the same ground as above.
Rollerball 1975
‘In the not too distant future, wars will no longer exist.
But there will be Rollerball’
In Norman Jewison’s film of 1975, wars are not the only inconvenience to be overcome in the near future. In this world nobody wants for food, energy or even entertainment. Governments and every other democratic means of making ends meat have been superceded by the ‘’Majors’, giant city corporations each providing separate services to the world for only one price, don’t do anything for yourself!
Entertainment comes in the form of the savagely brutal game of Rollerball, established by the Majors to demonstrate the futility of individual effort – a game that no one can be singularly good at. That is until Jonathon E (James Caan), a champion player so good that he is in danger of becoming the game’s first hero. Threatening the status quo and cushy deal for the privileged ‘executives’ who decide all.
If the plot seems a little loose and unconvincing the action is brutal, excellently photographed and utterly enthralling. Much like our hero we watch, mumbling and obliquely objecting to half expressed and opaque ideas about the importance of free will, just in order to make it to that final game. After all we know that when heads start getting crushed by motorcycle wheels and the teams are slowly reduced to numbers required for a gripping showdown, we’ll forget all about any uncomfortable allusions to big business and the lack of flesh on the bones of the story.
In this respect Rollerball doesn’t disappoint, away from the game however, the film is less successful. There are some excellent asides such as a group of bourgeois execs torching trees for laughs and a very likeably insane computer, which has just lost all of mankind’s knowledge of the 5th century, but between the matches, the film feels and looks decidedly underwhelming.
Unlike Death Race 2000, which is a film of a similar mould, the protagonist here doesn’t care about or even understand the wider socio-political environment, he’s on no mission, he just loves the game. And so do we. TR 10/2009

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