Sony Pictures
I’m not really a football person, but for a while I’ve heard that more serious injuries come from veterans of that sport than most others. Recently more research has discovered that just the repetitive motions of the linemen causes mild concussions, but can anything really be done? The game has gone through safety measures before, like adding more effective helmets, but some things are inherent to the underlying rules of the game. So can anything be done?
Concussion comes from relative newcomer Peter Landesman, who wrote and directed it, and stars Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist who makes an inconvenient but terrible discovery. Dr. Omalu works in the morgue in the Pittsburgh area, utilizing a technique where he talks to the dead believing it helps him connect with how and why they died. In the real world, Dr. Omalu really has worked in this field for many years, so the movie has this basically right.
The movie also shows the washed up former star of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Webster, who is suffering from serious health problems. By 2002, as the movie begins, he had been forced to sell his Super Bowl rings and was a drug user who lived in his truck. But at only age 50, Mike died and his corpse ends up by coincidence being examined by Dr. Omalu. Omalu finds the situation odd, as Webster had seemed to be experiencing some sort of dementia so he decides to perform a full autopsy, against the wishes of his superiors. Meaning he must foot the bill himself, for several thousand dollars.
This begins a sort of research adventure of a terrible sort, as Omalu slowly begins to uncover that perhaps the condition of Webster was due entirely to his career in football and repetitive head injuries. This doesn’t go over well with the NFL or people in general, especially after he publishes his findings with the support of his boss Dr. Wecht (Albert Brooks in a dramatic role again). Dr. Wecht is one of the few people that consistently supports him, and it is difficult as the NFL and others try to ruin Omalu’s reputation.
Through it all, Omalu is supported by his wife Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), although their specific romance is really only barely covered in the movie. It’s window dressing, if that. The problem here is that although the movie does a decent job showcasing the serious problem Omalu is trying to uncover, it doesn’t do a great job connecting us with the characters. The investigation comes in spurts, paced a bit oddly, meaning it’s slow at times and too fast at others.
The movie shoves in a few extra characters (based on real ones of course) but the writing isn’t really there to make them interesting. Sure, most people who know football will know who Roger Goodell (Luke Wilson) is but he’s barely in the movie. Similarly, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays Dave Duerson and it’s only by his acting that we care at all about his story, which is severely rushed. The worst off is Alec Baldwin, who plays a former NFL doctor who finally helps out Omalu, which should be given more attention and care.
The movie is over two hours long, and it wasn’t paced particularly well. Later in the movie there’s an attempt at raising the stakes, showing Omalu and Prima being harassed by mysterious men, including when she’s pregnant. His struggle to stay with it is the interesting part, but luckily I think Will Smith mostly pulled it off. A lot of the smaller roles were fine, but only a few managed to get really great work out of their minimally written roles. I was a bit surprised Gugu Mbatha-Raw got so little to do, but she did have a few key scenes while she kept Omalu on the right track.
I think that the movie is good enough in terms of humanizing this real world issue, and the star power of Will Smith might help get people to watch it. It may not be such a great movie, but I can ignore a lot of those issues if the final product is reasonably effective. And although I may not specifically care much about football, it’s easy to care about the people affected by it. Perhaps Concussion can make a difference, but perhaps it’ll be forgotten in a year. I suppose next year we’ll know.
Share this post
