Product: Rollerball (2002)
Rating: 2.0
One of the Most Terrible Remakes in Film History
In this terrible remake of 1975 film, Jean Reno plays an "evil" owner and manager of violent sports (or entertainment if you like) called "Rollerball." Just like a cross between rollerskating and ice hockey, people all over the world are excited watching the thrilling games - well, he wants it that way. No enters Chris Klein's character that soon becomes a new hero of the circuit, but he realizes that some heinous plot is going on when one of his teammates got heavily injured by receiving a big iron ball in the face.Well, that is the film's story, sort of. Actually, nothing really makes sense in those badly edited "game scenes" where players are seen hitting each other rollerskating, and motorcycles with howling engines stumbling on the rink (and one of the riders is beautiful Rebecca Romijn-Stamos from "X-Men" but you cannot recognize her ... again.) To be honest, I had no idea of what is going on and I'm afraid you won't either. Rules? Sorry, I thought there was an introductory part about them, but I stopped caring as the film got more and more incredible.The original "Rollerball" a cult film by Norman Jewison, knew what it wanted by drawing the bleak vision of our near future and its actions are still refreshing and exciting to see. But this remake most unaccountably ignores the tone of the original's futuristic society and stays content just showing meaninglessly violent stunts. The film remains pointless throughout I thought as it has no drama not even a decent story and no character. The game scenes look terribly bland. In fact they look dull compared with what we can see on some cable TV programs.To be fair, there are some good action scenes like opening skateboarding race or bike chasing in the midnight. But strangely they have virtually nothing to with the premise of the film, game of the title. Chris Klein is good and Jean Reno is just OK, but the latter's charisma seen in such great films as "The Professional" cannot be found here. And most strangely this thrill-free film is directed by John Mcteirnan of thrilling action film "Die Hard."