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Movies / On DVD / Rollerball
Rollerball

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Rollerball (2002)

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Reviews Counted:115

Fresh:4

Rotten:111

Average Rating:2.5/10

Consensus: Removing the social critique of the original, this updated version of Rollerball is violent, confusing, and choppy. Klein makes for a bland hero.

Runtime: 3 hrs 14 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure

Synopsis: It's the year 2005; the new sport of Rollerball is hugely popular in the unstable, ex-Soviet republics of South Asia. Marcus Ridley (LL Cool J) invites NHL-hopeful Jonathan Cross (Chris Klein) to... It's the year 2005; the new sport of Rollerball is hugely popular in the unstable, ex-Soviet republics of South Asia. Marcus Ridley (LL Cool J) invites NHL-hopeful Jonathan Cross (Chris Klein) to join him playing for the Zhambel Horsemen, in Kazahkstan. The highly paid Marcus and Jonathon are teamed with low-paid locals, who are routinely severely injured in the game, which is an extraordinarily violent extension of roller derby involving motorcycles, a metal ball, and many trappings of the World Wrestling Federation. Soon the team's star and the darling of promoter Alexi Petrovich (Jean Reno), Jonathan, is thrilled by the high-octane sport, the hype, the sports cars, and female team mate Aurora (a glowering, scar-faced Rebecca Romijm-Stamos). But gradually Jonathan discovers that the cynical Alexi and his opportunistic assistant Sanjay (Naveen Andrews) will go to any lengths to manipulate the game in order to provide an evermore gory spectacle and improve the game's television ratings. Director John McTiernan's movie is grungy and even more violent than the original 1975 ROLLERBALL. He conveys the visceral nature of the game with sharply edited action sequences and a goosed-up soundtrack, and then he shows the volatile game convulsively spinning out of control and causing social upheaval. [More]

Starring: Chris Klein, LL Cool J, Jean Reno, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos

Starring: Chris Klein, LL Cool J, Jean Reno, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Naveen, Andrew Bryniarski

Director: John McTiernan

Director: John McTiernan
Screenwriter: John Pogue, Larry Ferguson
Producer: Charles Roven, Beau St. Clair, John McTiernan
Composer: Eric Serra
Studio: MGM/UA

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Reviews for Rollerball

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Rollerball looks like a checklist shaped by a 15-year-old mallrat: thrashing metal track, skateboards, motorbikes, cracked heads and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos with her top off.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
06/24/06
Trevor Johnston
Trevor Johnston
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The rollerball sequences feel sanitised and stagey.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
12/23/02
Olly Richards
Olly Richards
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Such an incomprehensible mess that it feels less like bad cinema than like being stuck in a dark pit having a nightmare about bad cinema.

Full Review Source: UK Critic | comment Comment
07/16/02
Ian Waldron-Mantgani
Ian Waldron-Mantgani
UK Critic

Avoid.

Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | comment Comment
07/11/02
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A dire re-working of the provocative 1975 sci-fi satire.

Full Review Source: FilmFour.com | comment Comment
06/30/02
FilmFour.com

Crass and utterly incomprehensible.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
06/12/02
Stephen Applebaum
Stephen Applebaum
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

How this otherwise talented crew managed to make a film that feels this amateurishly low-budget is anyone's guess.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
03/31/02
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

This is a terrible big-budget fiasco with a go nowhere plot and terrible cast.

Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | comment Comment
04/29/09
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Cinema Crazed

The French accents go from Canadian to European within a sentence, and that's only from the ones I could pick up. Who knows what other languages were massacred in the process?

Full Review Source: Hollywood.com | comment Comment
11/20/08
Guylaine Cadorette
Guylaine Cadorette
Hollywood.com

This film was long-delayed and much altered in post-production and it shows.

Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | comment Comment
10/18/08
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile

Although Norman Jewison's stolidly grim and ultimately ludicrous 1975 original was hardly a landmark of nightmarish sci-fi, it towers over this.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
06/11/08
Robert Koehler
Robert Koehler
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

This remake exists for no clear reason at all. It doesn’t even make sense and the action is dull and repetitive.

Full Review Source: Sci-Fi Movie Page | comment Comment
11/08/07
James O'Ehley
James O'Ehley
Sci-Fi Movie Page

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Detroit News | comment Comment
03/10/07
Susan Stark
Susan Stark
Detroit News

Rollerball is rigged to play as a critique of the corporate media's ruthlessly sensational tactics (overseas, that is), but even a junior-high hockey goalie could recognize it as a cheesy product of such sensationalism itself.

Full Review Source: City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul | comment Comment
05/19/04
Rob Nelson
Rob Nelson
City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul

It's rare to see a movie fail in every possible area ...

Full Review Source: Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) | comment Comment
01/07/04
Greg Maki
Greg Maki
Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)

...tries to work in some high and mighty social commentary, and this is where it fails completely.

Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews | comment Comment
08/01/03
David Nusair
David Nusair
Reel Film Reviews

An own-goal fest that will have you asleep in your seat by half time.

Full Review Source: RTE Interactive (Dublin, Ireland) | comment Comment
04/08/03
Harry Guerin
Harry Guerin
RTE Interactive (Dublin, Ireland)

Pushes the Hollywood action movie to stratospheric new levels of incoherence.

Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | comment Comment
01/15/03
Paul Malcolm
Paul Malcolm
L.A. Weekly

Despite delivering a sexy Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, this 5-mph trainwreck is a badly executed attempt at action that can't even be relied upon to deliver mindless and gratuitous violence.

Full Review Source: Radio Free Entertainment | comment Comment
01/13/03
Andrew Manning
Andrew Manning
Radio Free Entertainment

The way the action is shown here, it's an incoherent mess.

Full Review Source: Film Threat | comment Comment
12/08/02
Chris Gore
Chris Gore
Film Threat
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Latest News for Rollerball

October 31, 2006: RTIndie: Can Indie Studios Survive Without Big Studio Backing?
With the sale of independent-minded ThinkFilm last week, can indie film distributors survive without big studio backing? More...

July 15, 2005: LL Cool J Finds a Multi-Pic Home at Lions Gate
The Hollywood Reporter brings news of a deal between actor/rapper LL Cool J and Lions Gate Films. Although the exact numbers have not been released, Mr. J (born as: James Todd... More...

July 11, 2005: Pogue Pens Remake of a French Fright Flick
Screenwriter John Pogue has sold his pitch for a remake of the 2002 French horror film "Malefique" to Paramount, says Variety. Producer Neal Moritz... More...

June 05, 2001: Romijn-Stamos, cast as the scarred Aurora the day before production started, had to learn to ride a hog. Fast. Opens in new window
More...

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