God didn’t intend for us to play football.

Concussion

(2015)

(SPOILERS) I rated Kill the Messenger, scripted by Concussion writer-director Peter Landesman, who seems to be magpie-ing his way through a variety conspiracy-related material, expressing either an anti- (Parkland; one would almost think he was trying to be controversial in suggesting JFK’s assassination was purely, solely and entirely down to Lee Harvey Oswald) or pro- (Messenger, the upcoming Felt, where he goes to the well already partially explored in All the President’s Men, by throwing a light on Deep Throat). Here he covers pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu’s diagnosis of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in NFL football players, and he’s aided by sterling work from a fine cast. Unfortunately, as both director and writer he rather lets the side down.

In terms of pluses, Will Smith offers an impressively immersive turn as the Nigerian-born Omalu, not so much because there’s anything particularly astonishing about the emotional journey (and the requisite love story with Gugu Mbatha-Raw is laborious Hollywood gloss, however much it may be based on fact), but because he abandons the usual Smith crutches of showboating charm and irrepressible charisma. It’s also just plain rewarding to see Smith rising to the challenge of peers who up his game, notably Alec Baldwin as the conscience-stricken former physician for the Pennsylvania Steelers and the ever-wonderful Albert Brooks as Omalu’s mentor. There’s a lovely little cameo from Eddie Marsan, and David Morse is strong as the former centre star whose suicide invites Omalu’s suspicions of something seriously awry with a game that habitually inflicts enormous damage on the brains of its players.

Omalu’s a real straight arrow, and a corpse whisperer (infuriating perhaps the most overtly hissable character in the movie, co-worker Mike O’Malley) who puts his money where his mouth is by funding vital tests himself. With his religious convictions, it’s perhaps surprising Concussion wasn’t sold to the faith-based crowd. Although, its negligible box office generally suggests a difficult movie for the real religious faithful, American Football fans themselves. And I’m suspect there’s enough crossover in competing fervours for it to be a problem case generally.

Landesman gets the conspiracy play down pat, aside from an obligatory, pedestrian “thriller” sequence in which pregnant Mbatha-Raw is pursued by persons unknown. The one-man-against-the-system nature of the case is solid movie material, from the dismissiveness of Omalu’s findings to the attempts by the NFL to whitewash the results of its nominally open, cards-on-the-table investigations, to the FBI bringing charges (eventually dropped) against Brooks’ character (although the timeline for this appears to have been jiggled in the picture’s favour to suggest a more express closing of ranks by the various powers-that-be).

Unfortunately, the director comes up looking rather crude and basic in other areas. An opening scene introducing Omalu’s diligence in a court case is borderline inept, as Landesman entirely distracts from the testimony by jumping around the delivery and intercutting random close-ups. It’s an attempt to underline the man’s attention to detail. but he succeeds only in kyboshing the intended representation of Omalu as a force to be reckoned with.

There are also many scenes in which the doctor needs a pep talk, stating that he doesn’t understand why people would behave this way (cover things up, not want to hear the truth), and being told the cynical reality, and that what he is doing is worthy. The most misjudged element is the “We’ve got another one” progression of the condition, though, which Landesman depicts as a virus on the loose; players break down, threaten their families or blow the brains out as punctuation points for Omalu’s dawning diligence. It’s histrionic, unfortunately, and it would have been better to entirely avoid this aspect, except as reported speech, than handling it in such a clumsy fashion.

Concussion would survive much better without these clichés, but Landesman seems intent on beating the viewer about the head to the point where any suggestion of subtlety and underplaying is lost. At one point a character draws an analogy between the denial of the NFL and that of the tobacco companies concerning the dangers of cigarettes, and a comparison might also be drawn between Concussion and Michael Mann’s big tobacco whistle-blower film The Insider. Landesman seems intent on tackling the kind of subject matter thoroughbred filmmakers like Mann and Oliver Stone have run with to great acclaim. Unfortunately, so far, he’s only revealed himself to be in the little leagues.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Doctors make the worst patients.

Coma (1978) (SPOILERS) Michael Crichton’s sophomore big-screen feature, and by some distance his best. Perhaps it’s simply that this a milieu known to him, or perhaps it’s that it’s very much aligned to the there-and-now and present, but Coma , despite the occasional lapse in this adaptation of colleague Robin Cook’s novel, is an effective, creepy, resonant thriller and then some. Crichton knows his subject, and it shows – the picture is confident and verisimilitudinous in a way none of his other directorial efforts are – and his low-key – some might say clinical – approach pays dividends. You might also call it prescient, but that would be to suggest its subject matter wasn’t immediately relevant then too.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

The Apartment (1960) (SPOILERS) Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out ’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“ boy forgives girl and all’s well ”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve?

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

You just threw a donut in the hot zone!

Den of Thieves (2018) (SPOILERS) I'd heard this was a shameless Heat rip-off, and the presence of Gerard Butler seemed to confirm it would be passable-at-best B-heist hokum, so maybe it was just middling expectations, even having heard how enthused certain pockets of the Internet were, but Den of Thieves is a surprisingly very satisfying entry in the genre. I can't even fault it for attempting to Keyser Soze the whole shebang at the last moment – add a head in a box and you have three 1995 classics in one movie – even if that particular conceit doesn’t quite come together.

This guy’s armed with a hairdryer.

An Innocent Man (1989) (SPOILERS) Was it a chicken-and-egg thing with Tom Selleck and movies? Did he consistently end up in ropey pictures because other, bigger big-screen stars had first dibs on the good stuff? Or was it because he was a resolutely small-screen guy with limited range and zero good taste? Selleck had about half-a-dozen cinema outings during the 1980s, one of which, the very TV, very Touchstone Three Men and a Baby was a hit, but couldn’t be put wholly down to him. The final one was An Innocent Man , where he attempted to show some grit and mettle, as nice-guy Tom is framed and has to get tough to survive. Unfortunately, it’s another big-screen TV movie.

Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists!

Don’t Look Up (2021) (SPOILERS) It’s testament to Don’t Look Up ’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Archimedes would split himself with envy.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) (SPOILERS) Generally, this seems to be the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad outing that gets the short straw in the appreciation stakes. Which is rather unfair. True, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger lacks Tom Baker and his rich brown voice personifying evil incarnate – although Margaret Whiting more than holds her own in the wickedness stakes – and the structure follows the Harryhausen template perhaps over scrupulously (Beverly Cross previously collaborated with the stop-motion auteur on Jason and the Argonauts , and would again subsequently with Clash of the Titans ). But the storytelling is swift and sprightly, and the animation itself scores, achieving a degree of interaction frequently more proficient than its more lavishly praised peer group.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog