‘It’s like people had a choice a long time ago between having all them nice things or freedom…’
There are so many dystopian thrillers that revolve around some kind of deadly game that it’s become almost a subgenre of its own. Death Race 2000, The Running Man, Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, The Long Walk… the list goes on and on. The list can be traced back to The Year of the Sex Olympics and probably as far back as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The thread that runs through all of these works is the idea that the general population is being controlled with mindless and sometimes vicious entertainment. Bread and circuses. Rollerball falls somewhere in the middle of all those movies and it’s a curious beast…
In the distant dystopian future of… 2018, the world has become a corporatocracy with the population obsessed with the eponymous bloodsport of Rollerball. Jonathan E (James Caan) is team captain of the Houston rollerball team, and, on the verge of retirement, he finds himself drawn into a wider conspiracy. John Houseman also appears as the villainous Mr Bartholomew.
Based on William Harrison’s short story Roller Ball Murder (Harrison adapted the story himself for the screenplay), Rollerball is an occasionally confusing film that is also confused about what it wants to be. You would imagine the depiction of a world ruled by corporations would be ripe for satire, and yet, the messaging here remains disappointingly bland throughout. This is a film with very little to say. Despite this, the actual rollerball sequences (filmed on location in a sports arena in Munich) are truly thrilling (even though it’s impossible to know what the hell is going on). The sport is a wild mix of roller derby, hockey, football, motocross racing, and judo, and while we’re supposed to be horrified by the mindless violence that defines Rollerball, it’s also incredibly exciting. Perhaps that’s the point.
Despite strong performances from Caan and Houseman, Rollerball is too long, too dense and too apolitical. It’s easy to see why it has become iconic, but this feels more like a missed opportunity than anything else.
