Interesting fact: Christmas is almost always the biggest box office day of the year. No wonder they open so many movies on Christmas Day. Based on the crowds I saw today, it was a really big day. I saw Concussion and Joy. Here is the review of the much anticipated Will Smith movie about the NFL.
Concussion (Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Morse) – It took the National Football League many years before it acknowledged that constant contact to players’ helmets caused traumatic brain injury. Even today, despite all of the evidence, there are deniers much the way that some people still believe that there is no such thing as man-caused climate change.
Concussion is a bold, if imperfect, story about the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) by a pathologist in the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office in Pittsburgh. Dr. Bennet Omalu was the doctor who inherited the autopsy on Mike Webster (played well by veteran David More), the Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the 1970s team of decade that won four Super Bowls in six years. Iron Mike was the epitome of tough, playing almost each down of every game for more than a dozen years. He died homeless, confused, sick, and practically abandoned. So did his teammates Justin Strzelczyk and Terry Long along with other NFL players like Andre Waters, Junior Seau, and Dave Duerson, many as a result of suicide.
Will Smith plays Omalu with an exceptional Nigerian accent and a gentle, yet relentless, demeanor that reminds us that, when he does serious parts like this, Pursuit of Happyness and Ali, he is one of America’s finest actors. He has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor. Alec Baldwin portrays Dr. Julian Bailes, the former Steelers team doctor who is a reluctant convert to the evidence Omalu uncovers. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Omalu’s wife who, in a very powerful performance, provides strength and moral support to her husband as she acclimates to American life.
But the best performance of the movie belongs to Albert Brooks as Omalu’s boss, Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, who as an elected official helps deflect criticism of Omalu’s work while providing him with behind-the-scenes support. (Having grown up in Pittsburgh, I can tell you that Wecht is almost a cult figure there. He was an outspoken critic of the Warren Report and was actively involved in almost every subsequent investigation of the Kennedy Assassination. He also ran for higher public office, usually unsuccessfully. He craved publicity and never missed an opportunity to be interviewed or quoted.) Brooks captured Wecht’s clever, brash, sarcastic, self-deprecating manner beautifully.
As the NFL and others attacked his work, Omalu feels the intense pressure of the League and fans alike. He and his family are threatened; the couple loses a baby. And while he knows he has done nothing wrong, he starts to doubt his own beliefs in the majesty of the country he grew up believing was only a step below heaven. He moves from Pittsburgh to the West Coast to escape, leaving the film a three-year hole that it chooses not to fill.
The movie takes dramatic license, of course. It turns out that Omalu may not have been the first to uncover the brain trauma issues of football players. Nor is the timing right for seemingly trumped-up federal charges that are brought against Wecht. But this is a movie, not a documentary, so the liberties are excusable.
However, I expected more from this film. I wanted to know more about the NFL’s cover-up of its knowledge of these problems, which have since been acknowledged. I wanted to see how the team owners debated this issue and particularly how my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers dealt with the premature deaths of so many of its players. I would have liked to have seen how other scientific research mounted to support Omalu’s work.
But instead, the film spends way too much time on the love affair between Omalu and his future wife. Is this Omalu’s biography or some long-awaited chronicle of the NFL’s ignorance, denial and/or greed? The former would not be an important movie; the latter would be. The decision to do a little of both hurts the film.
Concussion is certainly worth your time and effort, particularly if you are a fan of the game or a parent whose kids have or might play football. It is not a great movie, however, and that is too bad.