A Year of Garbage Movies #31, “Rollerball” (2002)
A shittier remake of a 1975 movie, “Rollerball” captures the camaraderie and passion of a non-existent sport that is way too complicated for even the writers to understand. Basically it’s like a roller derby but some of the players have motorcycles and you throw a metal ball through a gramophone horn.
Kevin Klein brings all of the charisma and energy to the role that you would expect from someone who still doesn’t quite believe they’ve been cast in a movie that’s not American Pie. Fortunately he doesn’t spend too much time on the screen. In fact, that’s true of any one thing in this movie. The entire experience is a frantic mashup of odd-angled shots and sweeping camera pans. This movie is basically motion sickness in film form.
But wait, there’s more! An entire sequence is shown to us in night vision. I had to go to the internet to figure out why the hell this was happening, since there’s no great reason for it in the movie and the way it’s shot makes it impossible to see anything that’s going on. Apparently they shot this entire chase sequence through the desert, realized after the fact that it was too dark, then tried to film it again but ran out of time or money so they applied the night-vision filter to it. I’m honestly surprised that they didn’t just use the sketch filter from “Take on Me” for the whole movie and call it a day.
Pros:
- Rollerball is a great program to keep at-risk young wannabe hockey players off the streets. I don’t mean being homeless, Klein almost causes kills half the population while luging through a city
Cons:
- This might be why we don’t see LL Cool J in more movies. This movie alone. This one right here is the only one he is in that was bad.
