Film Reviews

Rollerball

• Rating:
• Director: John McTiernan
• Starring: Chris Klein
• Details: US / 99 minutes / (15PG).

Based on the 1975 Norman Jewison film of the same name, Rollerball is given a brash and thoroughly unnecessary remake by the once great John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard). McTiernan doesn't add any new dimension to the original - if anything, he manages to completely deconstruct an interesting film and repackage it as something that more resembles a soulless music video or computer game.
Chris Klein plays Jonathan Cross, an impetuous youngster tempted into the high-risk but very lucrative game of Rollerball by his best mate, Marcus Ridley (LL Cool J). Coming across like a roller-skate version of ice hockey inbred with WWF; Rollerball is an extremely popular sport in Central Asia, where it is controlled by the fiendish Petrovich (Jean Reno phoning in a performance). Yet Jonathan and Marcus begin to have their doubts whether Petrovich has his players' best interests at heart and make plans to escape. Petrovich, however, won't let his greatest assets leave so easily.
Although it's production values are infinitely superior to the earlier version, John McTiernan doesn't seem to know what to do with the juicy material. When he's not throwing out ham-fisted metaphors and making childish political allegories, the director is content to fill screen time with stylized but emotionally vacant action sequences, which have little sense of purpose. Instantly forgettable

Review by Garreth Murphy