MovieChat Forums > Rollerball (2002) Discussion > It sucks but it's charming (spoilers)

It sucks but it's charming (spoilers)

posted 14 years ago by pamatemybaby117
2 replies | jump to latest

The original Rollerball is one of my top five favorite films and the ending is stunning. This is a terrible remake. It ignores everything that made the first movie great. But if you ignore everything it should be it is sort of sweet. They tried to make an incredibly bleak movie have a happy ending.

This almost felt like stoners watched the original and said, "Dudes, what if they had costumes, jumps and explosions? And at the end Jonathan could kill all the bad guys!" This movie lacks any subtlety and is extremely heavy handed in its message. It becomes a parody of itself and it is hilarious by the end because it tries so hard to be serious and falls short of any and all expectations.

Did I like it? No. But do I find it kind of endearing? Most certainly.

[–] truheart_1 14 years ago

Couldn't agree more! This is my all time favorite dumb action movie. Well actually, just plain dumb movie. I wrote a post here 7 years ago about this movie and just recently watched it again. It has not lost any of it's idiocy over time. I may have gotten older but this movie has not gotten better.

This movie was the begging of the end for Chis Klein and John Mctiernan. When those youtube videos of Klein's horrible audition popped up, all I could do was think of Rollerball. This guy is luckiest man in the world to have an acting career of any kind. As for Mctiernan, I still find it hard to believe he went from Die Hard and Predator to Rollerball and Basic. That is one hell of a downfall.

[–] scorpion-52 14 years ago

I wonder if Mctiernan regrets doing this film now that he's in prison, all joking aisde I enjoyed this film. I actually didn't think Klein was that bad n the lead role, (he can certainly outact the likes of Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner ANY day) I'll gladly watch this film over those lame puke-inducing Oscar bait films we get every year.