Rollerball

Rollerball (1975)

I can’t think of a more meaty, beefy, macho sports movie than Rollerball. It’s brutal from start to finish, both in the sport itself, and its presentation of the future.

The movie goes at its own pace which I must admit I enjoyed a lot more this time round than when I first watched it in my early twenties. Maybe it’s the bleakness of it all, but something about this movie speaks to me a lot more now than it did back then.

The opening sequence feels incredibly cinematic, a patiences to the first act since lost in movies. Then, the Tokyo match is savage. Brutality at its finest. Whatever we thought we knew about the sport, forget it, the rules have literally already changed. Now, we have fist fights, outright muggings, bike’s exploding, crowd riots, competitors set on fire, and corpses littering the track––Well that escalated. And, it only gets crazier by the time we reach New York. Not to mention poor Moon Pie getting goosed ten years before Top Gun was even made.

James Cain’s performance was stoic. The ambiguously vague story centres around his demanded retirement, and refusal. The sport was meant to show us at our worse, keep us under corporate control, not martyr it star. His defiance grows throughout the film climaxing in an insane set piece which both infuriates and inspires. Can’t keep a superstar down.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing the different takes in Futurism movies and Rollerball’s one is definitely up there as one of the more miserable predictions. Despite its sports sub-genre this movie weirdly had plenty to say, no-more so than when a bunch of socialites were shooting down trees with a laser gun for kicks. Or when a whole century's history was wiped out because the AI felt like it.

It’s not a movie for everyone, but I think it’s aged really well. Not something you’d watch for a laugh––that’s probably more the remake if memory serves––this one wants you to feel forlorn, while also enjoying blood-thirty, barbaric, red-blooded violences. It succeeded in both.