FILM: Concussion
CAST: Will Smith, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Albert Brooks, Alec Baldwin
DIRECTION: Peter Landesman
Concussion, written and directed by Peter Landesman, establishes two things right away — the extreme reverence that people have for football, through a Hall of Fame acceptance speech by Pittsburgh Steeler “Iron Mike” Webster (David Morse), and the bona fides of Dr Bennet Omalu (Will Smith), an extremely well-educated Nigerian immigrant and forensic neuropathologist in the Pittsburgh coroner’s office.
These are the two conflicting forces throughout the film: the love of the game and the un-deniability of science. The basis for the film, the 2009 GQ article Game Brain by Jeanne Marie Laskas (she also wrote the subsequent book Concussion), relies more heavily on the latter.
Dr Omalu is a curious, sensitive man, excited about his work; the kind of coroner who treats his bodies as people, asking them to help him find out what happened to them. This is where Iron Mike ends up, dead at 50, scarred by self-inflicted Taser wounds, living out of his truck, tormented by voices in his head.
Needing to know why he ended up this way, Bennet sets off down a self-funded path to discovery, and finds that what he discovers is something that one of the most powerful organisations in the country wants to keep quiet.
It’s a new disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), caused by the kind of repeated head injuries common for football players, boxers or wrestlers. This is controversial because his findings dare to suggest that playing football could be a hazard to one’s health. This isn’t something that the NFL wants its players — or the aspiring college and high school players with big dreams of making it to the big leagues — knowing.
Smith gives a strong performance as Omalu, more than just his distinctive African accent. He portrays him as a caring and determined man, an outsider who is able to see things as they are because he’s not beholden to the religion of football. He believes in the American dream, which is why he’s so appalled that these players, dreamers themselves, are tossed aside when they no longer have monetary value.
Concussion suffers a bit from not knowing where to focus — it glosses over some of the important connective tissue that would better demonstrate Dr Omalu’s work. It stuffs those moments into montages, and lingers on scenes where he struggles with his rationalisation for speaking up, trying to convince others to do the right thing. There are pep talks and tossed off truisms, and not enough procedure. This back and forth feels like an appeasement to the NFL itself, to show the struggle in taking the league on, which, if the science is to be believed, he absolutely should.
It’s hard to watch Concussion and not feel infuriated about the systems of power that exploit bodies for profit and then have the gall to not take care of these people.
Coupled with documentaries like Happy Valley or The Hunting Ground, you can’t help but feel that to remain a consumer of the NFL or college football is to be party to an exploitative organisation. But the film ends on a note that essentially says it’s OK to love the sport of football, just that we should take care of our players. Seems like a fair compromise, but for a film that wants to hit hard, where it hurts, at the end, it seems to shy away from that direct impact. — Tribune New Agency
A reasonable thriller
FILM: Home Invasion
CAST: Jason Patric, Natasha Henstridge, Scott Adkins, Kyra Zagorsky
DIRECTION: David Tennant
Chloe Paige (Natasha Henstridge) and her stepson Jacob (Liam Dickinson) live in an isolated mansion in an island. Chloe’s husband is travelling and she does not know his whereabouts. One stormy night, Chloe is hosting her friend Alice (Johannah Newmarch) when a car arrives and Alice believes they are strangers needing information. When she leaves the house, she is murdered by a masked man. Chloe closes the front door and calls the police and the home security company. However the police can’t cross the bridge that was damaged by the criminals. Meanwhile the trio of criminals breaks in Chloe’s house. The security agent Mike (Jason Patric) uses the security cameras to advise Chloe where to hide. The trio is looking for a safe and for Chloe while she is hidden with Jacob. Will the police arrive in time to save Chloe and Jacob?
Home Invasion is a reasonable thriller. The story is simple and tense but the characters have unreasonable attitudes and behave a bit strangely at times. — WS
Throwback to the 80s
FILM: Krampus
CAST: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, Emjay Anthony, David Koechner
DIRECTION: Michael Dougherty
Michael Dougherty, director of the cult horror flick of 2007, Trick ‘r Treat, returns to the genre to bring scares to yet another holiday in Krampus, which threatens to upend the generally benign season of gift-giving and family get-togethers around the festive season.
It’s a bit of a throwback to the kinds of family-skewed comedies and horror films we would get in the 1980s, Gremlins most notably, particularly in the way mayhem overtakes a quiet community.
It’s festive time for one particular family, which means yet another gathering at the home of workaholic Tom (Adam Scott) and his wife Sarah (Toni Collette), and the rest of the dysfunctional unit for three claustrophobic days that mostly involve snippy complaining and petty squabbling.
Tom and Sarah’s young son Max (Emjay Anthony), at perhaps the last age when Santa Claus might still be seemingly real idea, writes a letter to the mythical North Pole resident that relates his wish of Christmas with his family being “like it used to be”. However, when his letter is found by his bratty cousins and openly mocked, Max tears up his letter, and abandons his wishful beliefs, which inadvertently causes a chain of horrific events when the malevolent holiday demon Krampus arrives in the wake of a massive blizzard to put an end to the family bickering for good.
Dougherty starts off his film with the suggestion that something’s changed about how the holidays are celebrated these days as compared to when he was growing up.
For the most part, the movie clips along as you’d expect. — WS
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
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