Melodrama masquerading as expose

Rating: 4/10 (10 June 2017)

This is a well-made film about an important subject. Unfortunately it degenerates into a polemic against the National Football League, elevating its principal character from forensic brain specialist to crusading hero to martyr, all the while taking liberties with basic facts in service of a narrative.
One such basic fact concerns Mike Webster, on whom the first portion of the movie focuses. Webster was the victim of child abuse with mental illness on both sides of the family. He had a history of substance abuse and depression. This was before he ever played a game with the Steelers. And while Landesman encourages us to believe Webster killed himself, he actually died of a heart attack.
Another basic fact involves Cyril Wecht, portrayed superbly by Albert Brooks. A keen-eyed observer may detect the JFK connection; Wecht has been a prominent assassination conspiracy theorist (Landesman's previous film "Parkland" is devoted to the assassination). Here we see Wecht being arrested and are left to assume that it's the NFL retaliating for Omalu's research. In fact Wecht was charged well BEFORE that research was published, or even known to the NFL.d
Central premise of the film: repeated concussions cause CTE. This is asserted throughout, with Omalu expansively blaming football for the players' deaths. The problem is that there is no scientific basis for this claim. According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, "there are no published epidemiological, crosssectional or prospective studies relating to modern CTE... Owing to the nature of the published studies, being case reports or pathological case series, it is not possible to determine the causality or risk factors with any certainty. As such, the speculation that repeated concussion or subconcussive impacts cause CTE remains unproven." In short, the plural of anecdote is not data. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that NFL players live LONGER than average.
I realize it's too much to ask a Hollywood picture to eschew emotional appeals, narratives and love stories, even when they do harm to the movie's impact. But this movie would have been so much better served by hewing to the truth.