Bozo
Joined Feb 2000
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Reviews10
Bozo's rating
My entire life I have wanted nothing more than to work on movies. I thought about it day and night and made it my mission to learn by watching and doing. Throughout these years I have seen hundreds, possibly thousands of movies, but nothing has come close to matching the incredible power and beauty of the Lord of the Rings movies. Peter Jackson has taken one of the most popular literary works of all time and made it into one of the most moving and passionate motion pictures ever made. From frame one to the end of the credits, Return of the King is a triumph beyond all others. It has the ability to excite as well as stir great emotion. After all these years my thoughts on great cinema have changed. Now when anyone asks me what my favorite film is, I will now say, "Return of the King."
A classic thought experiment holds that if a group of monkeys are put in a room with typewriters for an infinite amount of time they will eventually pound out Hamlet. If this were attempted, the first product would more than likely be Rollerball.
John McTiernan's remake of Norman Jewison's 1975 film is nothing more than lots of action sequences cut together with a little bit of skin stuck in between. Unfortunately, any attempt to improve on or update the original has completely failed.
The movie plays out in the same way many of the low-budget action films of the late '80s do. Think of Rocky IV, but on rollerblades.
What this film lacks the most is a script with characters. The main character, if any, is Johnny (played by Chris Klein), a daredevil from Houston, whose best friend, Marcus (played by LL Cool J), makes a living by touring Eastern Europe on a rollerball team. This is all the audience ever knows about his character.
The opening sequence consists of Johnny racing through Houston on a rollerboard and being picked up in Marcus' Porsche just before the cops catch him.
In the brief conversation Johnny is told about rollerball teams and quickly convinced to join. The screen goes black and reads "Four Months Later."
What follows is a full 15-minute Rollerball tournament, with absolutely no explanation of how the characters got there, and only a brief run-through of how the game is played.
Rollerball is a good mix of a roller derby, a wrestling tournament and a football game. Each team member either wears skates or rides a motorcycle. The point of the game is to skate around the arena and throw a small steel ball at a large metal faceplate.
The rules are simple, until they are changed by the evil Alexi Petrovich (Jean Reno) who owns, not only the rights to Rollerball, but many of the television networks in several Eastern European countries.
Several members of Johnny's team become aware that Petrovich is fixing the games and killing off the athletes, but it may be too late to do anything about it.
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is in the movie, but only to give us a sneak peek of her breasts (just long enough to keep the PG-13 rating) and establish Johnny's love interest.
While some may argue that Rollerball is a comment on how violence, television ratings and advertising have consumed our society, it is hard to ignore the fact that the film, by its very existence, is doing just that.
The movie is full of product placements and cameos, including cleverly placed ads for 7-11, Porsche, motorcycles, skates, and special appearances by hip-pop artist Pink and the metal band Slipknot. While the movie is trying to show that violence and death is a bad thing, they are clearly the stars of the movie.
This scary comparison of ultra-violent fiction and real-world 2002 becomes even more frighteningly apparent when using the original 1975 film as an example.
In that version it is a view of our current century, and it isn't all that far off. In the new version it is basically a rehash of the same stuff, which isn't very exciting, because it's really happening on our television sets.
As a whole Rollerball lacks what most films offer, but it does have a special quality of its own. The action is fast-paced and well shot. During the bulk of the movie the editing is tight as a drum, but tends to be sloppy when there isn't a whole lot of action.
What McTiernan needs to do is make a movie of his own. It has been 16 years since he has written a screenplay and his last two movies have been remakes of Jewison films.
Most of his projects are based off books or are sequels, and it's time for him to buckle down and try something original.
Rollerball wants to be something that it isn't, a commentary on the ways that evil and greed can destroy lives, and ultimately our very existence as a worldwide community.
While it has exciting action sequences, it fails to deliver any kind of worthwhile message.
John McTiernan's remake of Norman Jewison's 1975 film is nothing more than lots of action sequences cut together with a little bit of skin stuck in between. Unfortunately, any attempt to improve on or update the original has completely failed.
The movie plays out in the same way many of the low-budget action films of the late '80s do. Think of Rocky IV, but on rollerblades.
What this film lacks the most is a script with characters. The main character, if any, is Johnny (played by Chris Klein), a daredevil from Houston, whose best friend, Marcus (played by LL Cool J), makes a living by touring Eastern Europe on a rollerball team. This is all the audience ever knows about his character.
The opening sequence consists of Johnny racing through Houston on a rollerboard and being picked up in Marcus' Porsche just before the cops catch him.
In the brief conversation Johnny is told about rollerball teams and quickly convinced to join. The screen goes black and reads "Four Months Later."
What follows is a full 15-minute Rollerball tournament, with absolutely no explanation of how the characters got there, and only a brief run-through of how the game is played.
Rollerball is a good mix of a roller derby, a wrestling tournament and a football game. Each team member either wears skates or rides a motorcycle. The point of the game is to skate around the arena and throw a small steel ball at a large metal faceplate.
The rules are simple, until they are changed by the evil Alexi Petrovich (Jean Reno) who owns, not only the rights to Rollerball, but many of the television networks in several Eastern European countries.
Several members of Johnny's team become aware that Petrovich is fixing the games and killing off the athletes, but it may be too late to do anything about it.
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is in the movie, but only to give us a sneak peek of her breasts (just long enough to keep the PG-13 rating) and establish Johnny's love interest.
While some may argue that Rollerball is a comment on how violence, television ratings and advertising have consumed our society, it is hard to ignore the fact that the film, by its very existence, is doing just that.
The movie is full of product placements and cameos, including cleverly placed ads for 7-11, Porsche, motorcycles, skates, and special appearances by hip-pop artist Pink and the metal band Slipknot. While the movie is trying to show that violence and death is a bad thing, they are clearly the stars of the movie.
This scary comparison of ultra-violent fiction and real-world 2002 becomes even more frighteningly apparent when using the original 1975 film as an example.
In that version it is a view of our current century, and it isn't all that far off. In the new version it is basically a rehash of the same stuff, which isn't very exciting, because it's really happening on our television sets.
As a whole Rollerball lacks what most films offer, but it does have a special quality of its own. The action is fast-paced and well shot. During the bulk of the movie the editing is tight as a drum, but tends to be sloppy when there isn't a whole lot of action.
What McTiernan needs to do is make a movie of his own. It has been 16 years since he has written a screenplay and his last two movies have been remakes of Jewison films.
Most of his projects are based off books or are sequels, and it's time for him to buckle down and try something original.
Rollerball wants to be something that it isn't, a commentary on the ways that evil and greed can destroy lives, and ultimately our very existence as a worldwide community.
While it has exciting action sequences, it fails to deliver any kind of worthwhile message.