Concussion (2015)

[Frayed Knot]

Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born forensic surgeon who uncovered the link between football and long-term cognitive impairment.
Not surprisingly, the NFL is not all that appreciative of his conclusions.

also: Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, David Morse

[Guest themetfairy]

A Lifetime movie-if-the-week for guys It's earnest but boring as Hell with too much of a chasm between the very good guys and the very bad NFL. Will Smith was fine but not superlative. It won't suffer from the small screen if you want to wait for it to come to Netflix or cable.

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, I came away disappointed - particularly so because I had been looking forward to it.

With a timely and important topic on their hands, the script focuses more on Omalu the person -- with undertones of how his search for the truth in these cases reflects his search for paradise in America -- which winds up turning the movie into at least as much of a soap opera (like I care how his dating life is going!) as it is about his work and the blowback from it.

Smith is fine in the lead role as is his acerbic boss Albert Brooks, and even Alec Baldwin's southern accent is only occasionally annoying. But the movie has some odd editing moments (wait, do we know who this new character is?) and the script (adapted apparently from a magazine article rather than say the more encompassing 2013 book by the Fainaru/Fainaru-Wada brothers 'League of Denial') leaves a lot to be desired and leaves a lot of untouched meat on the table as far as what I assumed was going to be the film's main topic.

It's not bad, it just could have been much better.

[Edgy MD]

Well, considering there's strong evidence suggesting the NFL got to make some personal cuts, that makes a lot of sense.

[TransMonk]

I watched the PBS Frontline doc on the subject two years ago. I'm guessing the film takes more dramatic license to expand the story than the Frontline episode.

I'll probably skip this one until it comes to cable.

[Frayed Knot]

It's not really that the film takes dramatic license (well it does, but of course all films are going to toss in more drama as compared to a documentary) it's that it concentrates at least as much on Omalu the person -- his style, his personal life, his motivations -- as it does on the results of his work. And rather than expanding the story they actually shrink it somewhat as the film strictly deals with Omalu's part in the whole concussion and after-effects issue while including nothing on the concurrent and follow-up work done by the crew in Boston that was so much a part of that Frontline doc and the 'League of Denial' book.

Edgy MD wrote: Well, considering there's strong evidence suggesting the NFL got to make some personal cuts, that makes a lot of sense.

Reportedly the pressure from the NFL came in the form of making sure that no one specific in the NFL was seen as the bad guy, based I guess on the old theory that if you spread the blame around enough then no one person is saddled as being the guy who's responsible.
What might say the most about it was that the most direct condemnations of the actions of the NFL and its media partners comes not from the script directly but via a montage of video clips which include a (HBO's) 'Real Sports' interview where a league spokesman mimics a tobacco exec of a generation earlier as he answers "Absolutely Not" to a series of questions on whether he believes there's any connection at all between football and concussions, and also from the (since discarded) ESPN feature 'Jacked Up!' where Chris Berman and his cohorts would cackle at a re-showing of that week's most violent hits. I'm actually surprised they were able to use that last part being that ESPN was a late pull-out from co-sponsoring the PBS doc due, it's widely believed, to ... wait for it, NFL pressure.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Guest

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

themetfairy wrote: A Lifetime movie-if-the-week for guys It's earnest but boring as Hell with too much of a chasm between the very good guys and the very bad NFL. Will Smith was fine but not superlative. It won't suffer from the small screen if you want to wait for it to come to Netflix or cable.

From the first trailer I saw of this, it had a Lifetime-for-fellers look to it.

I'm treating it as such.