A direct hit to the head of the NFL

Movie review: Concussion

Thanks to a cast that’s just as comfortable with comedy as drama, Peter Landesman’s forensic examination of the NFL’s inaction on head injuries is more than a preachy lesson in institutional denial, it’s a gentle testament to the importance of human compassion

Concussion

3.5/5

Starring: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Morse, Arliss Howard, Eddie Marsan, Hill Harper, Richard T. Jones, Paul Reiser, Luke Wilson

Directed by: Peter Landesman

Running time: 123 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

By Katherine Monk

Have you noticed the changes on the gridiron? The players don’t plow their heads into each other quite the same way, there’s something called the “Concussion Protocol,” and even the helmet designs have allowed for a little give on impact.

It’s all part of a systemic change to the way the National Football League does business, and the way actuaries determine liability in the wake of a precedent-setting lawsuit by former players who argued the NFL concealed the risk of repeated head injuries.

The league settled for millions, but for many players such as Junior Seau and Dave Duerson it was too late. They slowly but surely lost their faculties to a debilitating brain condition termed “CTE” for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The man behind the term was Nigerian neuropathologist Dr. Bennett Omalu, and he found it quite by accident in the forensic examination of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster after his death in September 2002.

Omalu didn’t understand why a 50-year-old athlete had the brain of a demented geriatric patient. He set about to understand more about the kind of life Webster led, and just by going back over the footage of his professional career, Omalu saw what everyone else somehow did not: Smashing your skull into something hard, even while wearing a helmet, is bad for your health.

At the risk of sounding callous, you could say ‘duh.’ But too many lives were damaged by communal denial that it’s pointless to stick out a finger of blame, which is probably why we’re only seeing this movie now: The legal battle is over. No one is going to get sued for telling the truth.

Not that Concussion is the truth. This film chronicling the events that led to Dr. Omalu confronting the NFL with medical fact is not a documentary. It’s a Hollywood movie starring Will Smith as the unfathomably heroic neuropathologist, and Alec Baldwin as a neurovascular specialist. Oh. And Albert Brooks plays a doctor, too, while Luke Wilson plays Roger Goodell, chair of the NFL.

If you think about it, Concussion has a killer comic cast, and it’s probably why this manly melodrama narrowly escapes Landesman’s heavy hand. The cast curls the edge of tragedy just enough to let us feel the human condition in all its screwed up wonder.

When Brooks’s character is eventually indicted for fraud and stealing office envelopes by a vindictive force, the veteran shrugs his shoulders and smiles as though he walked in from the set of Casablanca.

These small gestures that bring the oversized playing field down to the microscopic human level are the strongest moments in the film. They articulate the underlying message that human beings matter, regardless of how many powerful institutions deny their worth by neglecting their wellbeing.

It feels trite to even write these things down because it should all be so obvious. Yet, Mike Webster died in 2002. More than a decade passed before the league took action and accepted some responsibility. So if you feel a hint of frustration behind Landesman’s lecturing tone, you can understand why.

This whole movie takes us through that decade-long period when Omalu tried to raise awareness by publishing a landmark paper, only to be shut down and shunned by the NFL.

The league owns a day of the week, the one that used to belong to the church, as one of the characters points out. The NFL is the Goliath to Will Smith’s David, and Landesman plays it all as epic because that’s what gladiator stories demand.

We need to be inspired by the glory and the power. It’s what moves us, and makes us buy branded merchandize. But what happens when the gladiators become an object of pity, madmen staggering around in torn clothes?

Concussion had to show us the broken warriors and still appeal to the epic spirit that isn’t just football, it’s the goddamn American Dream. So with the NFL as the villain, Omalu’s character becomes the wide receiver, the one who has to go deep for the big patriotic play.

Thanks to Smith’s talent and his reach, he pulls it in, keeping both feet of his outsider performance inbounds. On-screen, that means he’s going for the smaller beats in order to hit the big ones. He lets Omalu look flawed, and he shares the scenes without hogging the big moments.

Even when the screenplay gets a little too pushy and the scenes feel a little pat, the actors work together to bring something real to the moment. Smith, in particular, is the reason why this movie makes it all the way to the end zone. Buy flomax online

The character may be written like a fairy tale wise man, and the beats of an American drum are always audible in the dialogue, but the performance stands apart from all of Landesman’s clunky machinery.

Smith brings an elegance of spirit to the whole undertaking that wins you over. The rest of the action ends in a dogpile, with the NFL coming out a little worse for wear after the two-hour tackle, but at least the viewer is eased of culpability. Buy amoxil online

You won’t have to feel bad about tuning in to playoffs, but you will be looking at those head collisions differently, and next time someone is put through a ‘concussion protocol,’ you won’t groan in frustration. Buy abilify online

As Omalu might say: You’ll know, better.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, January 16, 2016

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Review

User Rating

3.5 (2 Votes)

Summary

3.5Score

Concussion: Former journalist Peter Landesman (Parkland) chronicles the sad story of head-injured football players through the work of Dr. Bennett Omalu (Will Smith), a neuro-pathologist who discovered and named a debilitating degenerative condition that plagues former athletes exposed to repeated concussions. Though the film is grimly earnest, the cast raises the edges of each tragic page by finding the human flaws, and the gallows humor, that allows us to survive worst case scenarios. - Katherine Monk

3 Replies to "A direct hit to the head of the NFL"

joan Monk January 16, 2016 (1:14 pm)

This review is very sympathetic to the real life drama we see regularly when we watch the games . While we enjoy the “gladiators”, with their enthusiasm and athletic skills on the field, we are now more aware of what drives the “American” dream….money. As a reader of Katherine’s reviews I hang on every word that she writes, because she “gets it” every time. Katherine sees the whole picture. Her brilliant analysis of these movies is at the same time entertaining . We are stunned by her amazing insight and comprehension of bringing the story to the screen.She helps us to experience the real art of cinema. Knowing that Katherine has many talents, writer, artist, and probably, mechanical genius, we can only applaud again this entertaining and skilled writing of reviews. Her ability to tell us about the movie enhances our film experience, she, and the team are never boring to read. I am so glad we can easily read these stories and reviews. Compliments to Katherine and the whole team of excellent and talented writers.

kmoexpress January 16, 2016 (4:34 pm)
Thanks so much, Mum. I love you, too… and so does the team, though only a few have met you. We’re happy to be read by such a sensitive and empathetic audience, even if it’s just immediate family. And perhaps more to the point: this is way cheaper than therapy! 😉 I know you’ve got my back. Big hugs. And thanks for reading The Ex-Press.

Michael January 17, 2016 (6:44 am)

Brilliant review. I never played contact sports, football or hockey because I was too small. However I was a team manager of both as I grew up, so many of my friends were athletes. Any and all who had concussions died well before their allotted time. One who had several, went to sleep driving when young, Others died young for various other unexpected reasons. We noticed these deaths because these people had been heroes of a sort. They stuck out young, we remembered them as they aged. Survivors, almost all of them, exhibited slowed and or indistinct speech and short term memory failures before other people their age whose athletic pasts did not include contact sports. The few who made it past seventy, all deteriorated with dementia, strokes, aneurysms, you name it, brain deficiencies. At the eighties, any still here are in homes, completely out of it.

joan Monk January 16, 2016 (1:14 pm)
This review is very sympathetic to the real life drama we see regularly when we watch the games . While we enjoy the “gladiators”, with their enthusiasm and athletic skills on the field, we are now more aware of what drives the “American” dream….money. As a reader of Katherine’s reviews I hang on every word that she writes, because she “gets it” every time. Katherine sees the whole picture. Her brilliant analysis of these movies is at the same time entertaining . We are stunned by her amazing insight and comprehension of bringing the story to the screen.She helps us to experience the real art of cinema. Knowing that Katherine has many talents, writer, artist, and probably, mechanical genius, we can only applaud again this entertaining and skilled writing of reviews. Her ability to tell us about the movie enhances our film experience, she, and the team are never boring to read. I am so glad we can easily read these stories and reviews. Compliments to Katherine and the whole team of excellent and talented writers.
- kmoexpress January 16, 2016 (4:34 pm)
  Thanks so much, Mum. I love you, too… and so does the team, though only a few have met you. We’re happy to be read by such a sensitive and empathetic audience, even if it’s just immediate family. And perhaps more to the point: this is way cheaper than therapy! 😉 I know you’ve got my back. Big hugs. And thanks for reading The Ex-Press.
Michael January 17, 2016 (6:44 am)
Brilliant review. I never played contact sports, football or hockey because I was too small. However I was a team manager of both as I grew up, so many of my friends were athletes. Any and all who had concussions died well before their allotted time. One who had several, went to sleep driving when young, Others died young for various other unexpected reasons. We noticed these deaths because these people had been heroes of a sort. They stuck out young, we remembered them as they aged. Survivors, almost all of them, exhibited slowed and or indistinct speech and short term memory failures before other people their age whose athletic pasts did not include contact sports. The few who made it past seventy, all deteriorated with dementia, strokes, aneurysms, you name it, brain deficiencies. At the eighties, any still here are in homes, completely out of it.