Sci-Fi film released in
1975. Directed by
Norman Jewison, adapted from
The Rollerball Murders, a book by
William Harrison.
The film is set in the early part of the
21st Century. After a gigantic series of world wars, there are no more countries or governments, only
Corporations. To replace the public's lust for war, and to release intercorporate aggression, the Corporations have got together and created
The Game: Rollerball. See
Rules of Rollerball for an explanation of the game.
The film focuses around
Jonathan E (played by James Caan, with exactly the right mixture of practical intelligence and brutality), a star Rollerball player for the Houston Power City corporation. He has been in Rollerball for ten years without a fatal or permanently crippling injury, a record, and has led his team to countless victories. The public love him, and
therein lies the problem.
The game was created to show that individual effort was
futile; only through
cooperation and
self-sacrifice can success be obtained. In a team, individuals come and go, live and die, but the
team continues. Through his
longevity and popularity, Jonathan E has become a
hero, something not seen since before the corporate age. The corporations find this threatening, but as Jonathan is too
high profile to just bunk off, they try to force him to retire.
For various reasons, mostly involving the corporation 'taking' his wife away to be
married to a top executive years earlier, Jonathan refuses to retire. The corporation then plunge his team into increasingly lethal games, removing all the rules in the hope that Jonathan will die during a game. The
final game has no fouls, no time limit; the only way it can end is through the death of all players on one team. The ending is like a moment
frozen in time.
The sequences of film showing the game are
phenomenal; it's fast, brutal and suprisingly believable and well thought out (see
rules). The non-game sequences suffer by comparison, seeming overly quiet and slow
paced. A subplot sees Jonathan trying to find out anything about life before the corporate age, and invariably reaching a dead end, with echoes of
1984. The future is shown very much as an illusarily
utopic dystopia, with a large class divide between the citizens and the
executives, who can basically do and have whatever they want.
I first game across this film due to a childhood love of
Speedball and
Speedball 2 on the
Amiga, both of which owe Rollerball their existence.
The film is currently being remade by
John McTiernan, who also remade (well, I should add) Jewison's classic
The Thomas Crown Affair.
Chris Klein is cast as Jonathan Cross, with supporting roles from
Jean Reno,
LL Cool J and
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Early leaked photos made the whole thing look hideously like
Ice Warriors, but more recent ones recapture the feel of the original game, although
rollerskates have made the natural progression to
rollerblades. It may even be good, here's hoping.