'Rollerball' remake drops the ball

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

ROLLERBALL (Rated PG-13 for violence) One Star (Poor) A noisy, choppy remake about the participants in an ultraviolent game. The new version drains the 1975 original of any of the aspects that made it worthwhile, particularly it's cautionary aspects about a future of mindless violence. Chris Klein, LL Cool J, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos co-star for director John McTiernan. MGM, 96 mins.

The creators of the new "Rollerball" have eliminated everything that made Norman Jewison's 1975 original worth seeing:

• A cautionary, Orwellian tale about a totalitarian future in which dictators who numb the citizenry with an ultra-violent game? Why, no.
• A story about an aging athlete, dealing with the downswing of his career? Who needs it?
• An evil puppet-master, controlling the game with complex subtlety? Of course, not.
• Other characters worth getting to know? Heck, no.

This new version doesn't even depict the game effectively.

As depicted in the '75 film, rollerball was a fascinating, violent game, combining roller derby, lacrosse, and motorcross.

Armored athletes roller skated or rode motorcycles around a track, chasing a fast-moving, metal ball the size of a grapefruit. When they caught it, they had to zoom around the track twice, and then throw the ball into a target to get points.

The other team could employ all sorts of gang-tackling and slugging tactics to try to wrest the ball away.

In Jewison's film, the game was played on a fairly large track, with wide-angle shots that allowed viewers to understand the concept.

In John McTiernan's remake, the track has been compacted into a tight, claustrophobic space, the lens zooms in extra tight, and it's nearly impossible to follow the action.

Even at that most basic level, this film drops the ball.

While the original film was a thought-provoking story of a future ruled by a violent sport, the new movie is little more than a noisy bit of mindless mayhem. Instead of looking into the future, the new film imagines a Eurotrash world in a fictitious Eastern European country that is among the spinoffs of the former Soviet Union.

Instead of an evil government, an ambitious entrepreneur (Jean Reno), looking for global television domination rules the game. He notices that violence and bloodshed raise the game's ratings, so he conspires to add more to the mix.

Thus, it gets personal for the players. So the stars of the team — two Americans (Chris Klein and LL Cool J) and a woman of unknown origin (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) — try to fight back.

But none of the actors creates a character with any more depth than a video game hero. (In fact, THIS "Rollerball" actually seems like the video-game version of the original film — with all the substance and intelligence dropped out.)

The film has been on a shelf for nearly a year — and has reportedly been edited down from an R rating to a PG-13 rating.

That might explain the film's messy construction. It seems to have been edited with a Cuisinart. The violent action scenes are especially choppy.

Such are the challenges you must confront when you make a violent film for older viewers, and then realize it could only be appreciated by a 10-year-old.

Rated PG-13, with close-cropped violence.