Every film
critic has to experience bad movies in their life. After all, it
comes with the territory. In fact, if there were not the bad
what is to say we’d do such a good job justifiably lauding the
good? Granted, most of these tiresome travesties of film don’t
really mean all that much other than a couple hours of one’s
evening or afternoon wasted. They’re painful, sure, but more
often than not they dissipate so quickly from memory that no
real harm has been inflicted.
Granted,
there are exceptions. Those films are the ones I usually can’t
get out of my head and so they justifiably find a place on my
year-end "worst of" lists. Every now and then, though, I see a
movie so bad it becomes amusing, guaranteed to stick in memory
long after most of the films I’ve enjoyed in a year of vanished
from thought. Those films are reserved for the very pantheon of
gawd-awful moviemaking, taking their place on a shelf littered
with rejects like Howard the Duck, Showgirls and
Ishtar.
Well you
can add John McTiernan’s ill-conceived remake of Norman
Jewison’s 1975 sci-fi parable Rollerball to that list.
Bad in so many different ways and even more in a plethora of
others, Rollerball is a film so distinctly awful I’m not
really sure where to begin.
Granted,
you could see this one coming. Originally to be released in
theaters last summer, McTiernan’s film has been retooled
extensively since Harry Knowles at Ain’t It Cool News got an
early look at a rough cut and then savagely ripped it to shreds
on the site. Even more, McTiernan’s early version of the movie
was supposedly much darker and more gruesome in its violence and
presentation, but those overtly sensationalistic themes were
toned significantly down to hopefully attract a much broader
teen audience a PG-13 rating supposedly draws.
I can’t
imagine any audience being attracted to this quagmire of
inept plotting, acting and directing. If they are here’s hoping
they have a strong stomach for tedium for little of William
Harrison’s cautionary futuristic tale remains amidst the
bubblegum violence and bimbo-like intelligence of the piece.
Or maybe I
should say himbo-like intelligence, for the star of
Rollerball may be the dimmest bulb this side of a California
blackout. Chris Klein of American Pie fame takes his
first true lead role and does everything he can to Keanu Reeves
it into the ground. Playing star athlete and hero – although I
use that word lightly – Jonathan Cross, Klein shows all the
depth of a turnip, but even saying that might be a disservice
and a slander to turnips everywhere as they at least add flavor
to a meal from time to time.
Granted,
Rollerball makes so little in the way of sense –
something about expatriated athletes from around the world
competing in a rollercross/motorcross combination growing
excessively violent so an evil promoter (Jean Reno) can win a
North American cable contract – and the people involved so
increasingly vacuous that singling out Klein borders on cruelty.
But then, so does having to sit through the movie, and from the
steady stream of those at the screening walking out I could tell
many agreed with that sentiment.
McTiernan
should know better. A justifiably acclaimed action director, the
creator of Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October
knows how to put a movie together. Even failures like The
Last Action Hero and The 13th Warrior
showcased a keen eye for detail and well thought out action
sequences. But nothing in Rollerball works for a moment,
and how a director as controlling as McTiernan couldn’t see it
happening as the film was shooting is beyond comprehension. But
it is clear he didn’t for at one point the director felt he had
a quality project rolling along inviting Knowles to that
early screening only to see that porcine webmaster chew his
movie to shreds on his well known website.
I should
probably say that there were a lot of talented people other than
McTiernan responsible for this. John Wright is a wonderful
action editor best known for films like Speed and
Broken Arrow, yet everything in Rollerball is thrown
together at random and without regard to what has come before.
Cinematographer Steve Mason did a splendid job filming Baz
Luhrman’s 1992 classic Strictly Ballroom but by the murky
and unfocused imagery here one would think he was still an
apprentice behind the camera. As for Larry Ferguson and John
Pogue’s adaptation of Harrison’s original story, the less said
about that the better as there are not words to describe the
depths of awfulness this screenplay falls to.
That
Rollerball is bad isn’t surprising; that it is almost
unbearable is. John McTiernan made a great remake of an MGM film
in 1999 with
The Thomas Crown Affair. He should have stopped when he
was ahead, for after this piece of humble pie he just might have
trouble finding work again for quite some time. Either that, or
he better hope Bruce Willis calls about teaming up on Die
Hard 4.
