Rollerball * (2002, Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Naveen Andrews) – Classic Movie Review 2963

In a future world of 2005 with neither war nor crime, the public’s aggression is channelled into the ultra-violent sport of rollerball, a kind of basketball played on spiked motorbikes and deadly skates.

Director John McTiernan’s 2002 futuristic sci-fi action thriller is an abysmal, incoherent new version of the 1975 classic movie. It is a total mess and a complete waste of time. You can’t even work out what the rules of the game are supposed to be this time.

The amiable Chris Klein is miscast and no good at all in James Caan’s old role as the renegade rollerball champion Jonathan Cross, and though nobody’s any good, the worst performance comes from Naveen Andrews as Sanjay.

A major flop from the talented McTiernan, it runs only 97 minutes and is apparently a cut-down of a much longer movie. After poor receptions at test screenings, it was edited from an R rating to a PG-13 to try to find broader appeal. The release was postponed several times between 18 May 2001 and 8 February 2002.

Larry Ferguson and John Pogue’s screenplay is based on the original short story Roller Ball Murder and the 1975 screenplay of Rollerball by William Harrison. It is McTiernan’s second remake of a film directed by Norman Jewison, after The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).

Also in the forlorn star cast are Jean Reno, L L Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Oleg Taktarov.

In a criminal-wiretapping case filed by the US District Attorney for Los Angeles, John McTiernan pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents about requesting to have celebrity private detective Anthony Pellicano investigate producer Charles Roven during the production of Rollerball.

In February 2014 McTiernan was released from prison after spending 328 days in a South Dakota prison. His attorneys announced intent to appeal. The director, whose last movie was the military thriller Basic in 2003, has signed on to direct the heist thriller Red Squad.

McTiernan is the director of Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October and Predator.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2963

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