Hey folks, Harry here.... MGM made the completely wrong move of screening ROLLERBALL nearly immediately after their New York screening... This film needs months of work before screening again... Of course from the sound of the multiple forms... the fact that McTiernan dropped out of his follow-up project... they might be gathering notes for a MASSIVE set of reshoots and re-workings of the film. Can the film be saved? Can it be made really cool? I don't know. Honestly, with the way the game is played, I have no concept how you would reshoot to make the game compelling or logical. But then, that's why I run this site, and McTiernan is a director... right? Me, I'd throw all the Rollerball stuff out, start from scratch and shoot a film with Hugh Jackman as Jonathan... but that's just me....
Just saw it at MGM.
Your review basically scratches the surface at how abysmal this mess is. Did they stop the movie before the end and ask the audience questions, then re-start the film and show the last three minutes for your screening? Because they did it for ours.
This is a total embarrassment, and McTiernan was at the screening, looking like he was having one very rough evening. The crowd was laughing out loud through most of what seemed like the third act.
The entire screening room was in agreement that this was a truly awful film. We got 2 questionnaires to fill out, which really shows that they have NO IDEA how to fix this.
It should never see a release and be traded as a cult curiosity at Sci-Fi conventions, suffering the same fate as the Fantastic Four movie and Revlon Commercial Outtakes.
Moonpie
Hey folks, Harry here... Moonpie basically lays it out about ROLLERBALL as the film currently is... It is many times worse than the Corman FANTASTIC FOUR movie or even that CAPTAIN AMERICA or PUNISHER flicks. The key to fixing the film is to completely reshoot all ROLLERBALL footage, I firmly believe there is not a usuable frame. It's cluttered sloppy and not even a game. But... well, here's 19 Slurpees with his look....
Harry -
Tonight at MGM Studio in Santa Monica there was a couple of test screenings of ROLLERBALL. I attended the first one and happened to see the director, John McTiernan in the back row, checking out the audience reactions. Sorry McT, maybe if I was flown to NYC my reaction would be different, but this film stunk big time! Rollerbomb more like it! I guarantee this film will lose tens of millions for the studio and be an unfortunate black spot on the director's mostly stellar career.
This was the first NRG screening I have been to where they stopped the screening about half-way through to have the audience fill out the cards and have a quick discussion before resuming with the movie. I truly felt sorry for McT to have to hear how the audience thought the movie was ludicrous and nonsensical.
I read and agree with most of your previous review Harry. The sport of Rollerball is quite confusing and unappealing even to me, a huge sports fan. Cutting from the opening 'luge' scene in San Francisco (yes, extemely out of place - storywise, but kinda cool anyway) to a rollerball game left little time for the audience to understand the whens, whys, whats, and whos of the situation. Chris Klein (horribly miscast) and his pal LL Cool J (solid) are in this far away foreign country just for the money it seems, however none of the virtues of their job is really shown. My favorite part of the movie is Rebecca Stamos - hot as usual, but this time with a Russian accent. Strangely though, the filmmakers have given her a scar and she rarely shows her pretty face, hidden mostly by a mask. The climax in my mind was the brief and horribly conceived sex scene between her and Klein in the locker room - yes, there was some good nudity!
Jean Reno and his cast of shady businessmen are ridiculous and lack any understandable motivation in their corruption of the league and it's TV dealings.
There's an interesting scene shot totally with a night-vision lens. This was an inspired idea, but doesn't come off clear or exciting - just plainly dark.
The action in the so-called game is swift and intense, but so unfocused and jumbled that it's hard to follow who's who and what their intentions are. There are several laughable scenes in the film - one having to do with a proud father's reaction immediately after his son is murdered, another being Klein's final lines which it seems McT instructed him to be serious, brooding, and deep toned - anyway you see it, the audience just laughed.
The directing was visually pleasing throughout and a bit reminescent of Oliver Stone's effort in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. There just doesn't seem to be any sort of demographic that might be able to find this film pleasing. Teenage fans of Klein's probably won't get into this rated-R movie, and fans of the original will most likely be disappointed at the severe dropoff in quality of this remake. (And that's saying a lot.)
My current dilemma is choosing which is worse - Rollerball or Tomb Raider, which I saw last night.
19 Slurpees
