7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In a futuristic society where corporations have replaced countries, the violent game of Rollerball is used to control the populace by demonstrating the futility of individuality.
Starring: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck (II), Moses GunnSport | Insignificant |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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