Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Rollerball Blu-ray Movie Review

David vs. Goliathcorp.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 19, 2014

Are you a spectator sports fan? If so, what benefit do you derive from watching your favorite athletic competitions? Does the experience make you feel like part of something greater than yourself, an idea fostered in Fever Pitch? Or is it a more nostalgic, familial emotion that stirs your enthusiasm, as depicted in Field of Dreams? Or is watching sports some kind of cathartic release that keeps you mollified in your everyday activities, acting as a sort of release valve? That’s just one of the subtexts running through Norman Jewison’s 1975 opus Rollerball, a film that posited a 2018 society that had replaced war and social strife with the titular game, which admittedly unites a culture while also acting as a sort of televised opiate. As with many dystopian offerings, there’s some nasty subterfuge at work as well, and in fact once the real truth behind the foisting of Rollerball on countless millions is revealed partway through the film, Rollerball ends up being a kind of strange presaging of The Hunger Games . If The Hunger Games posits a quasi-Fascistic government intent on keeping everyone in line, including with the supposedly reverential but obviously violent and threatening Hunger Games, Rollerball instead offers a world run by monolithic corporations, which in their own way have completely usurped governments of yore, and who control virtually every jot and tittle of citizens’ lives. Part of that control is in fact Rollerball, a game that has elements of roller derby, albeit in a highly altered and increasingly violent form. Rollerball ends up playing like a wet (or at least moist) dream of Ayn Rand’s, proposing the triumph of individualism over a lowest common denominator collectivism. The film’s tenuous connective tissue between sports, politics and philosophy may be hard to swallow at times, but Rollerball is frequently exciting and quite a bit of fun, if it never quite rises to the sociological heights for which it’s obviously aiming.

Jonathan E (James Caan) is one of the titans of Rollerball, a game that has swept the world and provides the same cathartic release to its huge global audience that “old fashioned” things like war used to. Jonathan E plays for Houston’s team, which is owned and operated by the all seeing, all knowing Energy Corporation, one of a handful of such massive entities that has replaced traditional governments in running (and in fact controlling) what used to be nation states. Energy Corporation’s ruthless chairman Mr. Bartholomew (John Houseman) might have a serpent like ability to slither through moral ambiguities, but he is absolutely focused on manipulating Jonathan to do his bidding. Much like the interplay between Katniss Everdeen and President Snow in The Hunger Games, the upstart Jonathan finds himself in the unfortunate position of becoming a hero to the populace at large, thereby becoming a threat to Bartholomew’s quest for absolute power.

Rollerball’s 2018 timeframe seemed impossibly far off in 1975, but of course understandably appears well within reach now. Some of screenwriter William Harrison’s predictions have been close if not absolutely correct. The dominion of televised sports over a worldwide audience is truly epic, with various professional leagues raking in untold billions (maybe more) every year. Similarly, if we’re not quite ruled by corporate entities yet, we’ve come a lot closer through the symbiosis of government and large corporate donors. What doesn’t quite work in Harrison’s formulation is the Energy Corporation’s singular devotion to keeping Jonathan in line, failing repeatedly, yet never really seriously considering something more “drastic” (outside of an implied intentional violence within the game of Rollerball itself). By contrast, at least President Snow overtly discusses killing Katniss (outside of the Hunger Games) if she becomes too unruly.

Still, the corporate intrigue interwoven with the sports aspects work a good deal better than a kind of maudlin personal element that sees Jonathan mourning his failed marriage to Ella (Maud Adams), a woman who seems to have more or less willingly become a pawn of the Energy Corporation. The whole angle of an apparently omnipotent corporation seemingly brought to its knees by a single obstinate individual becomes increasingly unsustainable from a dramatic point of view as the film progresses, even if it provides the proper amount of proletarian people power for audiences to exult in.

Where Rollerball really excels is in its fantastically staged sequences depicting the frightening combination of carnival like hucksterism and visceral violence in the Rollerball game itself. Aided by superbly choreographed action elements and unusually athletic performances by Caan, co-star John Beck, and a coterie of topflight stunt performers, Rollerball fully sparks to life during the game moments, a perhaps ironic testament to the power of watching combatants in an arena.

Rollerball Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rollerball is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. Jewison and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe capture the intensity of the Rollerball games with a variety of techniques, and if the relatively quick cutting, quasi-handheld approach of some of these sequences add at least a perception of softness, overall the appearance of this high definition presentation is nicely filmic and stable looking. The weird orange color of the Houston uniforms pops nicely, offering a nice contrast to the kind of antiseptic, colorless and plastic looking world of The Energy Corporation. Flesh tones look accurate, if slightly peach colored. Fine detail is quite good even in midrange shots, and contrast and black levels are both consistent. The elements are in very good condition as well, with only very minor flecks and the like cropping up on occasion. Some scenes appear to have been push processed, which allows for more shadow detail but which also adds grain and softness.

Rollerball Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's kind of interesting that Rollerball includes a DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track, since IMDb lists the film as having been screened theatrically with either 4 track (35mm) or 6 track (70mm) sound. There's little doubt that the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track also included on the disc represents a rather dramatic uptick in sonic activity, with a really excellent accounting of the almost panicked, chaotic sound of the Rollerball games. Jewison's use of classical source cues (including Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" for organ) also sounds fuller and richer in its 5.1 setting. Dialogue is cleanly presented and neither the mono nor the surround track exhibit any problems of any kind.

Rollerball Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• From Rome to Rollerball: The Full Circle (480p; 7:54) is a vintage featurette drawing parallels between the cathartic elements of gladiatorial fights of yore and the game of Rollerball.


• Return to the Arena: The Making of Rollerball (480i; 25:04) is a later (but still vintage by contemporary standards) EPK featuring lots of interviews and scenes from the film.


• TV Spots (480p; 1:32)


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:58)


• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (1080p; 2:06)


• Audio Commentary with Director Norman Jewison. Jewison almost always provided insightful and incisive commentaries for his films, and Rollerball is no exception. He talks about everything from utilizing classical music to underscore the film to capturing the action in the game sequences, nicely segueing from anecdotal to more technical information.


• Audio Commentary with Writer William Harrison. Harrison also contributes a very interesting commentary, one that is perhaps understandably more skewed toward the writing and adaptive processes than to other aspects.


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Rollerball Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As I rewatched Rollerball in preparation for this review, I kept getting reminded of the phrase "Everything old is new again" in a number of unrelated ways. The film itself posits a reboot of the venerable roller derby sport, replete with corporate shenanigans and an attempt to make the watching of a Rollerball game a way to keep the public at large pacified. But in a meta sense, you can see many of the same ideas percolating in Rollerball showing up decades later in a property like The Hunger Games franchise. Unfortunately, that comparison tends to point out a couple of the inconsistencies and dramatic missteps William Harrison's approach offers. Still, Norman Jewison crafts a really exciting film that celebrates the triumph of the individual, certainly one of the oldest stories ever told. This Blu-ray features solid video and audio and comes with some nice supplements. Recommended.