For a primer in everything that's wrong with Hollywood movies,
enjoy this 95-minute seminar from onetime action-movie maestro
John McTiernan, who may not top his LAST ACTION HERO work
here, but comes close to a tie with TOMB RAIDER for most vapid
big-budget blockbuster of recent times.
There's a granule of a good idea at work here: a WWF-style circus
erected in the ruins of a post-Soviet Second World economy in
Somethingorotheristan. The Vince McMahon of this scavenger
ecosystem is Jean Reno, whose accent totters from the Slavonian
to the West Gauloise: Chris Klein is ze pretty-boy Americain who
discovers that the x-treme game of Rollerball is really a front for
corporately sponsored murders of star athletes for high
ratings--and guess who's next!
With LL Cool J as an unbelievably retro Black Friend Who Relays
Plot Information and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, wearing a gnarly
scar on her face as if to justify her rampant toplessness, the
movie, especially in its first third, plays as if it were directed by a
computer-assembled focus group comprised of twelve-year-old
boys addicted to Do The Dew commercials. In the most obnoxious, most grotesquely produced, and most interesting
section of the movie, McTiernan tries to set up a circus of
bloodsport grotesquerie that's part manly-man cable show, part
Oliver Stone wigout and part "A.I." Flesh Fair. Once the movie
settles into its (absurd) plot, the bad acting of Chris Klein, who
suggests a smile painted on a broomstick, and the hideous
international-coproduction-ness of it all (Jean Reno laughing--laughing fiendishly!) overwhelms one's sense of humor.
This is not a good-bad movie. Kirk Kerkorian, heal thyself.
enjoy this 95-minute seminar from onetime action-movie maestro
John McTiernan, who may not top his LAST ACTION HERO work
here, but comes close to a tie with TOMB RAIDER for most vapid
big-budget blockbuster of recent times.
There's a granule of a good idea at work here: a WWF-style circus
erected in the ruins of a post-Soviet Second World economy in
Somethingorotheristan. The Vince McMahon of this scavenger
ecosystem is Jean Reno, whose accent totters from the Slavonian
to the West Gauloise: Chris Klein is ze pretty-boy Americain who
discovers that the x-treme game of Rollerball is really a front for
corporately sponsored murders of star athletes for high
ratings--and guess who's next!
With LL Cool J as an unbelievably retro Black Friend Who Relays
Plot Information and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, wearing a gnarly
scar on her face as if to justify her rampant toplessness, the
movie, especially in its first third, plays as if it were directed by a
computer-assembled focus group comprised of twelve-year-old
boys addicted to Do The Dew commercials. In the most obnoxious, most grotesquely produced, and most interesting
section of the movie, McTiernan tries to set up a circus of
bloodsport grotesquerie that's part manly-man cable show, part
Oliver Stone wigout and part "A.I." Flesh Fair. Once the movie
settles into its (absurd) plot, the bad acting of Chris Klein, who
suggests a smile painted on a broomstick, and the hideous
international-coproduction-ness of it all (Jean Reno laughing--laughing fiendishly!) overwhelms one's sense of humor.
This is not a good-bad movie. Kirk Kerkorian, heal thyself.