Rollerball | review by Rafe McGregor
Rollerball,by Norman Jewison (20th Century Fox)
Another Golden Anniversary.
While Jaws turned fifty with much hype andfanfare last week, including hereat Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, it’s Rollerball’s turntoday, albeit without the bells and whistles. I’m not sure how, but inspite of being both a science fiction and James Caan fan and familiarity withthe premise, I’d never seen the film. I’ve always had a soft spot for Caan’sonscreen persona, an underrated, understated, effortless tough guy tough guy witha very distinctive style (he reminds me of John Wayne, though where Wayne isalways in the Old West no matter what part he’s playing, Caan is in a big citysomewhen in the nineteen seventies). Caan’s performances in all of TheGodfather (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Thief (1981), andMisery (1990) are inspired and Rollerball revolvesentirely around him as Jonathan E(vans), the first and only superstar of theworld’s most dangerous and popular game in 2018 (forty-three years in thefuture).
Rollerball’s screenplaywas written by novelist William Harrison, who developed it from a short storycalled ‘Roller Ball Murder’, which was first published in Esquire in 1973. Theworld of 2018 is a utopia rather than dystopia, a planet of plenty whereeveryone literally has everything they want and nation states have beenreplaced by multi-national corporations that coexist in a state of avariciousharmony following a little-talked about and possibly even erased event known asthe Corporate Wars. The competitiveness essential to unrestrained capitalismis, it seems, channelled into rollerball in an international tournament inwhich teams from various cities clash in a spectacle of bloody and vicariousviolence for the players and audiences respectively. The actual game is acombination of inline speed skating and Basque pelota with a couple of motorbikesthrown in and the rules are changed regularly to make it more brutal. Thetop-ranked team is Houston, courtesy of Jonathan’s skill and resilience, andthe inciting incident occurs when he is told to retire by the chief executiveofficer of the corporation running the game (if not the world), Mr Bartholomew(played by John Houseman), who is revealed as the narrative’s antagonist.
There are a couple of things that strike oneimmediately watching Rollerball fifty yearslater. First, the extent of the explicit critique of global capitalism with thegloves off. The capacity of the Hollywood film industry to make money fromapparently resisting a system of which it is such an integral part never ceasesto amaze me…and has been at work for a lot longer than I thought. Second, the sciencefiction trope of a utopia that turns out to be a dystopia as soon as thesurface is scraped is becoming rather dated. It is much easier, for example, toimagine the worlds of Mad Max (1979), BladeRunner (1982), Strange Days (1995), andChildrenof Men (2006) as or in our future than a land of plenty where we all keep ourselvesbusy with shopping, pill-popping, and rollerball.
Jonathan doesn’t want to retire and one is never sure why. His lavish lifestyle would not change at all, his existentialexploration of the conflict between comfort and freedom is somewhat limited, andhe must be nearing the end of his shelf-life anyway. The only plausibleexplanation is an obsession with the adoration of the bloodthirsty crowds, buteven this isn’t entirely convincing. The conundrum exposes one of the two flawsin the film, which may have accounted for a critical reception that did notmatch its commercial success and has left it with a fair 57% on RottenTomatoes: Jonathan is simply not a particularly sympatheticcharacter. (This is not one of Caan’s best performances.) The second is just asdamaging. Given that the genre of the film is some mix of action, thriller,sports, etc., the representation of rollerball is really poor. The cinematographyand stunts fail to convey the speed and danger of the game, which ends uplooking quite camp with its players modelling their rollerskates, leatherpants, and almost invisible cosmetic scars. I’ve watched ice hockey games on televisionthat look more dangerous and there isn’t a single missing tooth in Rollerball. The filmisn’t terrible, but it’s not great entertainment either.
Talking of ‘terrible’…Rollerball was remade byJohn McTiernan and released in 2002. Coming from the director of Predator (1987), DieHard (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), TheThomas Crown Affair (1999), and Basic (2003), Iwas surprised to see the film’s impressive 3% on theTomatometer. As if that isn’t bad enough, the Los Angeles Times also claimed it was one of the biggest commercial failures of all time. The remake starred ChrisKlein, LL Cool Jay, and Jean Reno, all of whose performances I usually enjoy, butKlein was fresh from his role as a lacrosse player in AmericanPie (1999) and American Pie 2 (2001) sothat might be the first clue to avoid it. I’m glad I watched the firstRollerball, but I won’t be wasting seventy-eight minutes of my life on thesecond.**
