Starring: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Luke Wilson, and David Morse
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 123 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2016
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This American biographical, sports-medical drama is based on the 2009 expose, “Game Brain” by Jeanne Marie Laskas. It tells the story of the suppression of research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (known as CTE) by the National Football League in the US. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, earlier this year, and was co-produced by Ridley Scott.
In 2092, football centre-forward hero, Mike Webster (David Morse) was found dead in his pickup truck. He was a hero on the football field and began losing his mind in his late 40s. The reason for his death was not obvious, but it was known that he was already drug-dependent. Subsequently, an autopsy was conducted by Nigerian-born, Pennsylvania coroner, Dr. Bennett Omalu (Will Smith). The autopsy showed that Webster died from severe brain damage, caused by repeated blows to the head. Omalu and his colleagues, including his boss, Dr. Cyril Wecht, published their findings on the case, but they were rejected unequivocally by the National Football League (NFL) of America.
Omalu gathered data subsequently on other players and a newly appointed commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell (Luke Wilson), was eventually persuaded to discuss the findings on Player Safety with a NFL committee. Omalu was unfairly excluded from the meeting, and Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin) presented Omalu’s findings for him. The NFL rejected the findings, and Omalu was pressured to change his arguments. Events became personal. His wife, Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), miscarried with the stress of what was occurring, she was stalked, and eventually Omalu was forced to move house. Only after a NFL executive, who was a footballer with cognitive problems, suicided, and wrote a suicide note admitting Omalu was right, did the United States Congress become involved in the issue. The NFL was forced to take Omalu’s claim seriously. It knew that a number of former NFL stars had suicided following their experience of concussion.
League football is a sacred activity in the USA (“God is no. 1, and Football is no. 2” in the USA) and the film steps on very sensitive ground. The film shows Omalu as a man of complete integrity, who decided to take on a powerful institution that was committed for political and financial reasons to declaring its football stars “safe”. Will Smith tackles the role of Dr. Omalu with subtle delicacy and intelligence, and his performance is compelling. But things are a little one-sided in the way he plays the part. Moral right is obviously on his side, but the film spends much of its time on Omalu’s emotional involvement with the issues, instead of the tragic plights of the unfortunate football stars. But despite that inference, it is sobering to know how many great players later suicided, and we learn depressingly how easily aggression becomes a publicly-acclaimed event on the football field.
The film as a whole has strong emotive force in alerting anyone to the risks of head injury in football. It is hard to watch this movie and stay uncritical about the game, and therein lies its problem. Football is the indisputable villain of the piece. The film slowly and surely fires its ammunition against a very popular sport, and in choosing to emphasise just the dark side of the issues, the film begins to look unbalanced. The Director of the movie, Peter Landesman, pushes too hard with the obvious, and his direction affects the film’s unfolding drama. No matter what one feels about football aggression, Omalu’s statement in the film that ” God did not intend for us to play football” overstates the case against.
The movie is caught between a powerful film about the potentially fatal link between head injury and a particular sport, and one that plugs the irresponsible nature of ignoring a likely link. It shifts from being a smart investigative thriller into being a statement about the absolute righteousness of Omalu’s position. This is a film that might have probed deep into the reasons why Football exists the way it is, but it chose not to do so. The film, however, does make you think carefully about unthinking, patriotic adulation of Football, despite what the movie calls “the grace and power of the game”.
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