A terribly important subject in just an OK movie

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2016)

Actually, Will Smith as Dr. Bennett Owalu, who discovered CTE as a pathologist working on a football star in Pittsburgh and went further to discover it as a major issue in the sport, is more than OK here, and I was glad to see him pulling out some dramatic work that was him constantly trying (and usually succeeding) in elevating about the restraints of the script and basic goodness of the character. It's a shame the script and director are kind of ho-hum; after Spotlight and The Big Short this past year, which took on incredibly major topics and gave them stories and characters that had wide breadth and interest, here it's just kind of eh seconds. We may care about what this character goes through, but just on the level of straight movie drama he's only given so much dimension, and his love interest/wife is rather underwritten.
Again, Concussion is not really bad; aside from Smith there's some solid supporting work from Albert Brooks and Alec Baldwin, and a number of scenes are good (albeit a few others seem to be trying to make sure they don't offend American football fans, with comparisons to Shakespeare with the sport, which makes things a bit confused, like saying that cigarettes are still so good to have in The Insider or something). But ultimately there's no reason to not just save your money and just watch the Frontline documentary about the entire CTE issue, or wait for TV as it's a fine option for that.
It may be watching that that's given me the thought that this could have gone much deeper and perhaps given the subject more analysis and weight as opposed to what is a story that is in sort of conflict between doing a straight-forward biopic on a not very interesting man and an expose on one of the great scandals of our time. If this was made in the 1960's it would be kind of the same movie except with Sidney Poitier in the lead.