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130 comments in total

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48 out of 60 people found the following comment useful :-
As remote from the average film-goer's awareness as 2001: A Space Odyssey, 14 March 2002
Author: Noel Bailey (uds3@hotmail.com) from Longmont: Colorado US

In deference to Stanley Kubrick himself and the wondrous achievement that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is, was and forever will be, I do not speak of ROLLERBALL in the same breath. Having said that however, here is a film that although lacking the scope, budget and monumental depth of its compatriot, is a totally brilliant piece of film-making, equally awesome in its implications and social comment.

Norman Jewison created a masterpiece with Rollerball - understated, misunderstood and undervalued both at the time of its release and later. Perhaps ultimately to its its greatest benefit - the release of the plebian 2002 re-make which will stand for all time as the most nauseatingly insulting and tastelessly gratuitous reminder to recall the original with perhaps more relish than might otherwise have been the case.

No purpose in re-hashing the plot - anyone reading this will already know it. Suffice to say, James Caan's Jonathan E stood for that most basic of human principles - the rights of the individual! As John Houseman, the corrupt and ubiquitous head of the all-powerful Corporation that owns and operates ROLLERBALL inc worldwide, tells Jonathan at one point,

"Rollerball was meant to demonstrate the futility of resistence, no man was ever intended to become bigger than the game."

This was a society (set in 2018) with media censorship in place to such a degree a centralised computer stores the worlds' entire literary knowledge (physical books being a thing of the past as in FAHRENHEIT 451 (another futuristic look at social oppression and rumored to be the subject of a remake in 2003 by Mel Gibson). Marvellous interspliced sequence with Sir John Gielgud as keeper of the world's centralised computer to which Jonathan is drawn, seeking answers to questions he was never supposed to ask. You have to really watch and LISTEN to ROLLERBALL to EXTRICATE from it, what the makers are offering you in terms of reflective contemplation. So many saw the film's middle section as "boring!" So is looking at the sky if you have no knowledge of cloud formation, atmospheric beauty or even indeed WHY there IS a sky and what it means in the grand scale of things! Caan's gradual self discovery as to his own identity and purpose is hand-crafted for you during these middle scenes - THIS is what the film is about..not merely the superb action sequences which are so richly photographed and presented in that gladiatorial arena, a colosseum for the new millennium, no more no less!

The highlight of the film, if you are able to see it, is the party for Jonathan E, supposedly to mark his resignation but which in fact might be seen as the Energy Corporation's Last Supper! The scenes of the amphetamine-fed yuppies, destroying the trees with the flame-gun has always made me cry, not because I'm a wimp, a greenie or even an anti lobbyist for hand guns, but because of what those terrible scenes stand for and bring to my own emotional recognition...a directionless society that we are right now so unerringly headed for. Look at the expression on the face of Jonathan's ex-wife as she comes to realise where its all gone wrong - not just for herself but for them all. Now tell me this is boring!!!!

As has been recognised by some fellow critics, the absolute last scenes of the movie are perhaps the greatest. The point being less subtly made as we see Houseman staring through the glass at Jonathan E, the last man standing, his corporate outline encircled by the reflected flames on the track - hello? does anyone understand this?

One of the greats! Watch this film...don't just see it!

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27 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
The original and still the best of the genre, 13 January 2004
Author: raysond from Chapel Hill, North Carolina

This film is a classic. A brilliant adaptation of the future and that is way better than the updated version that John McTiernan released which to this day cannot hold a candle to this science fiction masterpiece that was released in 1975. The year 1975 brought out some of the best movies of that year and some to this day still holds its own. From "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest",to "Jaws","Shampoo",the rock musicals "Tommy",and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to the performances of "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" to "Dog Day Afternoon",and not to mention "Nashville" and the sequel "French Connection II",and "The Eiger Sanction",these films represented what a year it was in motion pictures especially in the year 1975.

The film "Rollerball"(United Artists,1975),was screenplay by William Harrison and directed by Norman Jewison,who was Oscar nominated for his brilliant direction in such films,"In The Heat Of The Night",and the musical "Fiddler On The Roof",is no stranger to science fiction material. The film is set in the year 2018 where there are no wars and no crime,but there is only....the Game. In a world where corporations rule and no one asks questions-the vicious and barbaric sport of Rollerball satisfies the violent impulses of the masses. Tuned to their televisions,the people watch the sport of the future which is a brutal mutation of football,the Romanesque gladiator fighting,motorcross and hockey. Jonathan E.(played brilliantly by James Caan) is the champion Rollerball player-a man too good for his own good. The corporation has taken away the woman he loves(Maud Adams),but they won't take away his soul even if the diabolical corporate head(John Houseman)tells him he'd better retire..or suffer the old-fashioned way.

With some surrealistic imagery,Orwellian theme,and tense action with some of the best action sequences ever filmed,this picture will grip you from the moment the ball rolling out and zooms into the stadium to its chilling cilmax,this movie has haunted audiences as it takes a look into the future and what the future would become,and has a stunning effect. James Caan's performance is something to marvel at and John Houseman's performance as the diabolical corporate executive is a chilling and stalking cold and with some of the strong support from its cast including John Beck,Moses Gunn,and Ralph Richardson.

The 1975 version is worth seeing..it is the original and still the best of its genre...Don't even bother with the 2002 version with was directed by John McTiernan.

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27 out of 33 people found the following comment useful :-
Controlling the beast within, 26 July 2000

Author: (patrick.hunter@csun.edu) from Northridge, Ca

Why some people have called this film shallow, I will never understand, considering it focuses on character more than most all sci-fi films, especially those action ones made today. Not surprisingly, the recent remake dwelt more on action than character, and perhaps it's significant that director Norman Jewison normally avoids making science-fiction films.

Also, I personally don't interpret ROLLERBALL as an anti-sport drama. It doesn't attack sports per se as much as violence. In his audio commentary to the DVD, Jewison, like many Canadians, admits he's a hockey fan, and once, while witnessing a game get bloodily out of hand, he was inspired to adapt Harrison's marvelous short story.

All in all, I think of the movie as a plea for all of us to find our own basic humanity (and those who say the film lacks humanity really baffle me). In our present competitive world, where the U.S. speed limit is 65 MPH but everyone drives 75 or faster, this motion picture reminds us to control the anarchistic, power-driven beast within.

To offer one example, in its final scene, Jonathan E is about to murder the last opposing team player...but relents. If the film were truly anti-sport,then I think Jonathan would drop the ball and leave; he would mock the game as Mandy Patinkin's character does hockey at the end of SLAPSHOT. Instead, Jonathan E still plays it: he baskets the ball to earn his point because, though he may have touched his humanity, he still retains the drive to win and the thrill of the game. Unlike other--often more sentimental and simple-minded--anti-sports dramas, ROLLERBALL represents the positive aspects of sports (such as ethical aspiration, etc.), while at the same time its negative aspects (such as triumphalist violence, etc.). Afterwards, as the crowd roars, the film might have concluded with a standard, comforting triumph-of-the-human-spirit message, but instead it freezes on a deliberately distorted shot of Jonathan with Bach's portentious music indicating what awaits. Yes, he may be a winner today, but in this world, where the corporation is everything and the individual nothing, his future is dim indeed.

A shallow film? Nonsense! I think this movie taps into ones humanity more than most of the sentimental tripe hyped as significant drama these days.

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22 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Action-packed and insightful., 24 July 2004
Author: grendelkhan from Xanadu

Rollerball is another of those great 70's cult sci-fi films. It features a great cast of actors and a smart script. It was notorious at the time for its violence, although that was greatly exaggerated in comparison to some professional sports and entertainment. It features a futuristic reimagining of the Roman Empire, with gladiatorial games to distract the populace from their bleak existence. It also predates cyberpunk literature, with ts depiction of a world controlled by powerful conglomerates, a world not too different from the present one.

James Caan is fantastic as Johnathan E, the Michael Jordan of Rollerball. He continues to succeed in a sport designed to show the futility of individual effort. The sport is constantly changed to stop him, yet he continues to overcome every obstacle.

John Housman is electrifying as the head of the Energy Corporation, owners of the Houston Team. He has conspired with his peers to keep the masses down and use this sport to both distract them and show them that the individual can't succeed. He grows more desperate as Johnathan E defeats his schemes. He tries every trick without success.

The supporting cast is filled with great actors, like Moses Gunn, John Beck, Sir Ralph Richardson (not John Gielgud, as one reviewer stated), Maude Adams, and Shane Rimmer.

The film demonstrates that the individual can triumph over insurmountable odds and cautions against corporate control of society. It uses both allegory and speculation beautifully, and packages it with thrilling action. The remake was destined for failure because it couldn't see beyond the action. The action was only window dressing for the greater themes. If only more recent sci-fi films were this thought-provoking, or other films for that matter.

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27 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
An Action Classic With Brains!, 14 March 2005

Author: Dan1863Sickles from Troy, NY

I first saw this movie on HBO at the age of 14 and I sensed immediately that it was a classic, a combination of action, sports, sex, and social commentary. All the years of viewing other films have only made me more and more appreciative of this movie's many strengths.

On one level, I believe this is the best sports movie ever made. It is miles ahead of more "realistic" films like NORTH DALLAS FORTY or SEMI TOUGH or even critical favorites like COBB and EIGHT MEN OUT. The very fact that Rollerball is a make believe sport adds believability to the action sequences. Watch a baseball film and you can see at a glance that Robert Redford or Kevin Costner are not real athletes. But since rollerball has never been played, James Caan as Jonathan E really looks like the best in the game. There are no "clichés" like home runs or long passes to spoil the danger and excitement -- every crash and goal is new, never having been seen before. And there are no clichés about the fans, the athletes, or "win one for the Gipper" or gamblers or shady ladies trying to make Our Hero throw the game. From the beginning we sense the stakes are higher -- Jonathan E will either conform or die.

That brings up the fact that ROLLERBALL also shares a central theme with a lot of other powerful movies, like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, COOL HAND Luke, and even A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. What happens when a uniquely gifted individual refuses to participate in a corrupt system? This movie is so powerful as a drama you hardly notice the sci fi trappings. The rugged action scenes are so real you hardly notice that rollerball is a make believe game.

James Caan as Jonathan E turns in a sensitive, nuanced performance, deliberately underplaying the tough guy side as much as possible. Michael Beck as Moonpie is the foolishly overconfident one, playing Frank Sinatra's Maggio to Caan's Robert E. Lee Pruitt. But unlike the hard luck privates in this man's army, these rollerball stars get to have glamor, luxury, and unlimited sex between vicious games of rollerball. The movie captures so much sensuality and glamor that you can see why men risk death game after game to be known as "great rollerballers who bash in faces." This movie is spectacular -- an action classic with brains!

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18 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Underrated 70's film, 19 November 1999
Author: JeffG. from Boston, MA

This movie presents a dark, disturbing look at a possible future. The movie portrays a cold, sterile society where humanity is generally absent. Corporations run the world and the global pasttime is a violent sport reminisent of the Roman Coliseum. The rollerball scenes, which get more and more violent as the film progresses, are disturbing enough. Equally disturbing is a scene where a group of drunk partygoers blow up trees with some sort of gun. The citizens of this future society are really lacking feeling and humanity. Despite the film's dated look, it's still a future that seems quite possible.

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Dated Look But Top-Notch Filmmaking, 3 August 2001
Author: Jubal28

"Rollerball" is one of those classics of sci-fi that I somehow managed to miss for all of my 30 years. Whilst browsing the local store, I found the DVD for ten dollars and figured I had nothing to lose -- to rent it, if I could even find it on DVD, wouldn't cost THAT much less.

I had some vague notion of the storyline, but I tried not to read the case or liner notes and take in the movie on a first impression. Released in the summer of 1975, there are definite and readily apparent influences of earlier films, not the least of which being Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." The colors, the film stock, the editing style are all reminiscent of that earlier, similarly-themed master work, yet I don't believe it detracted from this film at all.

Supposedly set in the year 2018 (though this is never established in the movie, that I could tell), corporations have replaced governments and managed to eliminate war, poverty, disease and bad hair days. People don't have too much of a say in what goes on around them, but they're all very physically comfortable. Of course, the violent nature of the human beast must be satisfied, and it is -- in the gladitorial ring of the world's most popular sport, Rollerball. The game consists of two teams (from cities all over the world) skating and motorbiking around a 1/8-mile track, trying to get a steel ball into a goal. As the course of the season progresses, more and more limitations as to what constitutes fair play are removed, and by the final, the melee is total.

James Caan plays the Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Joe Montana of Rollerball, Jonathan E.. He's the biggest star in the world, but he's also a thinking man, and when the corporation which owns his team wants him to retire, he refuses, wanting to know first why they'd want him to retire when he's playing at his best.

The rest I leave to the viewer to find out. I can only say it is a very well-crafted script with plenty to say about violence, the spirit of the individual man, and the bloodlusts that a happy and idle populace can muster. Very well-filmed with touches of brilliance in editing and framing.

A detraction which really couldn't be helped involves the portrayal of the future. Director Norman Jewison couldn't know what the world of forty years in his future would be like, so he took the wise route of not making it all that different from 1975, but with subtle changes (such as the interesting but impractical "multivision" concept in which all TV sets have a large screen and three smaller screens above it, each showing different but related pictures). The result, though infinitely preferable to lots of neon and superfluous antennae, is that the place looks like 1975 with slightly cooler gadgets. I can't tell you what 2018 will look like, but it won't look like that.

Interestingly, the "corporate inevitability" concept of the future, which I believe Jewison meant earnestly, plays out much more as a satire of the opposite, a communist world. Much of what the coroprate culture says, as personified by John Houseman's Mr. Bartholomew, sounds much like the rhetoric of communism -- people are fed and comfortable and happy, but the individual is beholden to the group at all costs. Indeed, some of the words of description of the culture seem lifted straight from Marx and Engels.

The DVD leaves something to be desired, though. The picture is a lot dirtier than I'd like, especially in still-shot scenes. The color is muted, though this may be part style, and some shots seem positively muddy.

The remastered 5.1 soundtrack is a disappointment. The rear speakers get very little play. One particular effect of note, I must concede, is one moment when you can hear the ball roll all the way around the arena, and it's as though you're standing in the center.

In all, it's an excellent movie, which I can't recommend enough, but if the disc had been any pricier than it was, I would have felt as though I was somewhat taken.

Perhaps after the release of the upcoming remake, there will be a better special edition.

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28 out of 45 people found the following comment useful :-
This film is the don/Ubermensch., 8 December 2004

Author: foolfm from Ether

I thought id right this as some other comment said it was disappointing, and i had to put them straight.

This is a flawed masterpiece, yes. But still a masterpiece. The slow bits that other commentators point out are in contrast to the super fast game scenes. And what a Dirty Little Game it is.

But hey thats life, I think this ranks up there with 1984, as one of the few films that realistically depicts life as it really is.

I think the strength and ultimately the weakness of this film is the simplicity it achieves.

Strength, as usually a film with this sort of scope becomes rather convoluted and philosophical; but this film uses some visually stunning symbols and very little dialogue - remember those fools who say that there is no depth of character, this film is based in the world of "the last man", where everyone is a weak victim of the state, they don't have any depth of characture. Thats the point, the state has achieved its ideal.

Its weekness, as people don't get this film (people generally don't get many films), as in the case of Donnie Darko, but DD is so obviously complicated people think that they are missing something. With this film blink and you miss it - its so simple people don't see its masterful and sublime use of symbols. Also you get the feeling the directer thought his film would be banned for glorifying violence, so he made a special effort to hammer his point home(take the losing an epoch scene).

And at worst think its some film about violence. I first saw this film when i was 14, and it opened up my eyes to the use of symbols and structures in films. Watch it, it changed the way i view films and life.

Not an exaggeration.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
You can't watch it, you can only re-watch it..., 3 August 2001

Author: Nico Wabe (nixon@cirsrss.gsfc.nasa.gov) from Washington, DC

This is a film that demands repeat viewing. When I was a kid, my brothers and I used to just fast-forward all the slow, `talkie' scenes to get to the action. We couldn't understand why the whole film wasn't just composed of game sequences (a criticism also leveled by at least one reviewer on this site).

Now, having just watched the movie twice in a night, the second time with the director's commentary, I have finally got to grips with the scenes between the action, and discovered that I like it more than ever. The view of the future is not highly original; tipping its hat to the stratified societies foreseen by Orwell and Huxley, amongst others; but nevertheless the portrayal is engaging. Jewison astutely realised that only by filling in the image of the future society, the characters, and the political background against which the tournament unfolds, would the game be seen as truly REAL for the characters. In the meanwhile, he also has the chance to build suspense, upping the stakes for both the heroic gladiator/combateur Jonathon, and his would-be puppet master Bartholemew. In this way, when we come to watch the actual contests, our enthusiasm is whetted, and by making the rules progressively more dangerous with each passing game, the stakes grow ever higher.

The central themes of the movie are (i) loss-of-soul/nihilism/sensual-vs-spiritual-happiness, and (ii) individuality vs state control. Perhaps the best scenes elucidating these themes are the famous `tree killing' scene, and the conversation between Jonathon and Ella in the forest. The use of imagery and metaphor is widespread; I will mention only the terrific concept of the roulette wheel as game arena, with the players INSIDE, instead of outside; and the Circus Maximus parallel. You may draw many interesting conclusions from this about the director's and writer's intent.

My final word is: watch it once, soak up the action, and be bored by the rest. Then view it again, feel yourself in Jonathon's dilemma, experience his wrenching disappointment with the people in his life who betray him, and try to tear yourself away if you can as he is pushed inexorably to his fate in the arena of ROLLERBALL.

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10 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Would this be the future?, 5 December 2005

Author: Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA

Coming out as it did right after the Vietnam War ended, it seems that "Rollerball" accurately reflected the sense of cynicism - inherent in the idea of dystopia - that had taken over the country. It portrays a corporate future in which the only entertainment is an ultra-violent sport called Rollerball. The thugs who have taken over are able to use this sport not only to control their players, but also to control the population. But one player, Jonathan E. (James Caan), is seeking to change all that...

Aside from looking at the use of violence for entertainment, "Rollerball" also employs some interesting camera angles (mainly in the zooms). Apparently, director Norman Jewison got part of the inspiration from "A Clockwork Orange"; you can certainly see it here. A great movie.

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