Cheap Rollerball (DVD) (James Caan, John Houseman) (Norman Jewison) Price

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Customer Reviews of Rollerball

Icy, sterile, fascist Nadaland
The TIME of ROLLERBALL is the very near future. Like Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451, the film describes a society whose citizens have traded individuality...and possibilities freedom provides...for challengeless safety in ignorance and material comfort. Because ignorance is not quite bliss...or strength...the corporate oligarchs of 2018 have provided a singular outlet for passion: Rollerball. This brutal game pits teams of warrior athletes in gladiatorial combat sport comprising lacrosse, basketball and good, old-fashioned gang fights. James Cann plays Johnathan E. the world's number 1 Rollerball champion. John Houseman plays Barholomew, the superficially benevolent fascist FATHER. Director Jewison paces the film well from its action-packed opening to rather predictable conclusion in Johnathan's "messianic" triumph in THE BIG GAME. Where the film engages, however, is in its icy style. The film's climactic expositions and denouments are crafted like the Rollerball game. Only Cann's "violence" seems real and genuinely defiant. Even John Houseman fails to ultimately generate menace because...unlike a military dictatorship thriving on POWER...the corporate fascists thrive on ORDER. And there is no such thing as the PASSION of...or Nietzschean WILL to...ORDER. The OLIGARCHS are bureacrats not soldiers. As Houseman himself admits the Societal Managers envy the Rollerballers their human though "dehumanizing" arena of controlled danger and death masked as entertainment. Whether Jewison intended or not, the CLIMAX of the film is NOT the Rollerball Final, but the night when Johnathan E. refuses to retire and his TRIBUTE NIGHT becomes a testimony to the bankruptcy of the society and leadership that lauds, despises and fears THIS MAN. After a pathetically passionless night of drug- induced stupor and futile efforts to "orgy-out", the lackies of the Corporate Dictatorship stagger into forests TO SHOOT TREES(!) with Jack-in-the-Box rocket pistols. As trees burn...because they cannot "duck"...frustrated pseudo-Rollerballers stumble back to "sleepless" beds because like mini-Macbeths they have burned Burnham woods whose real "plant" life threatens their utterly fruitless sterility. Is this an "exciting" movie? Not in the sense that our own WWA seems to generate excitement boardering on fanaticism. Intellectually, however, the film succeeds. Recall Robert Frost's poem FIRE & ICE. ROLLERBALL depicts a world where a concept like "sacredness of life" is meaningless. ROLLERBALL is choosing to be "distracted into distraction by distraction": a way of life... a culture of death...embracing Entropy...order of Disorder...lacking knowledge (BOOKS are virtually banned)and self-preserving passion to FEAR DEATH rather than worship it and killers who incarnate it...

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It's a better social commentary than science fiction film.
"Rollerball" (judged one of the best sports movies of all time by Sports Illustrated) is more than a sports movie (although in 1975 Norman Jewison was only guessing at the thrall in which superstar athletes such as James Caan's Jonathan E could hold the public; fans carry pictures of him to matches as though he were Chairman Mao or Yasser Arafat), more than an action movie (though the stunt sequences during the games rival those of "Mad Max"), and much more than Orwellian science fiction.
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The strengths of the movie lie in the way a society that is run from cradle to grave by corporations (rather than governments) is effectively portrayed as being both class-driven (director Norman Jewison uses the time-honored Hollywood trick of using actors with English accents to play the ruling corporate class, while the Rollerball players have working-class Southern U.S. drawls when they speak at all) as well as completely desensitized from all of humanity's pains through the creature comforts (including those of the recreational pharmaceutical variety) provided by the corporations.
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The public channels what remaining passion for violence that exists in their world through the game of Rollerball, allowing themselves to be deluded into thinking that the carnage going on in their arenas and on their Multivision sets is perfectly excusable becasue it is not perpetrated by men but by machines ("Don't be silly, they're made in Detroit"). There is some question to the validity of the game itself; after the first match shown on film (the quarterfinal game of the season, it seems), the coach of Jonathan's team remarks that they will play New York in the Final. Knowing that they still have a game to play before reaching the Final, this seems not in itself anything more than a coach inspiring the confidence of his team. But by indicating that New York will be the opponent (when presumably New York also has a semifinal match to play) would seem to indicate that the season is pre-scripted, not unlike WWE wrestling or the soccer seasons in the former East Germany.
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And no one, save Jonathan E (the sports greatest and by default most violent player), ever questions the idea that no one is allowed to make even the most basic decision for themselves (men and women don't seem to meet and fall in love; rather, couples are "assigned" to each other).
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In a telling moment, Jonathan and his ex-wife (Maud Adams; in the future all women are models) are talking about the "benefits" of corporate society; she remarks that civilization has always been a crusade against poverty. Jonathan makes the most Libertarian remark I've ever heard in a major motion picture when he believes that the luxuries of corporate society have succeeded in "buying off" its citizens, that the last decision society ever made was to be comfortable rather than free, which then enabled the corporations to take over everything.
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This has always been one of my favorite movies; when I was a kid I enjoyed it because of the action (American audiences have always ben more riveted by the game itself rather than the deeper philosophical meanings to the film), but as I've gotten older and more politically aware I have come to appreciate the underlying nefarious themes behind the game and have thus gained an even greater enjoyment of an already terrific film.

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are you kidding me?
I've heard nothing but bad reviews and it looks like they were justified because this movie blows. Plot is pretty weak and the fact that its set in Kazakhstan is even stupider. I think filmmakers just like the way it sounds because its they seem to forget that they are many other soviet republics ( but I guess any time there is any action is all happens in Kazakhstan) . Geez. Naveen Andrews who did quite a good job in Kama Sutra looks like a total dweeb with a wedge haircut. Jean Reno is a caricature of a villain. It also looked like the half of the cast of La Femme Nikita had supporting roles in this movie. And that green light in the final sequence! What the hell were they thinking?! I guess they wanted something artsy but it just looks ridiculous. Oh, and the last straw was that Chris Kline nerd. Not only he is a lousy actor but casting him as a main bad boy who loves adrenaline is the stupidest thing anyone could have done. He has no personality and no charisma. He is bland, bland, bland.