Extras: Animated Menus, Trailers, Future
Sport: The Stunts of Rollerball, Rob Zombie Music
Video "Never Gonna Stop", Interactive Rollerball
Yearbook, Horsemen Audio Commentary.
Director:
John McTiernan
Cast:
Jonathan Cross: Chris Klein
Petrovich: Jean Reno
Marcus Ridley: LL Cool J
Aurora: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Sanjay: Naveen Andrews
Denekin: Oleg Taktarov
Serokin: David Hemblen
Coach Olga: Janet Wright
Halloran: Andrew Bryniarski
Katya: Kata Dobo
Herself: Pink
Rollerball.
The film that recieved raving reviews and
box office receipts that threatened to topple
Titanic's
total and become the highest grossing movie
of our time... not. On the contrary, this movie
was supposed to be out in August 2001, then pushed to
the lucrative month of February. And what's that? Did
it bomb? Oh yes. It bombed. Rollerball made around
$20m in the US. It did that bad.
Obviously the intense action must have cost at least
$90m. Okay, despite the horrible reviews
and bad reputation I was kind of hoping it wouldn't be
that bad. And to my suprise it was not.
Rollerball tells the story of Jonathan (Chris Klein), a young sports
player who turns down a contract for the NHL to be the
star of a futuristic sport that rules Europe -
Rollerball. The games ensue and suddenly players are
being injured just to get ratings. Jonathan catches
onto it after he gets gelp from two fellow players,
Rebecca Romaijn Stamos and LL Cool J.
The movie takes a series of plot twists to try to explain the dry
conspiracy plot and what ultimately leads to a suprisingly violent ending.
The visual presentation is very intese. The Rollerball
game sequences are filmed very well by director John
McTiernan. Very fast and often violent games are
portrayed well and shows you how good of a director he is.
Now, lets get into the disc. The video, as always from
MGM, is very good. The transfer is bright with hardly
any artifacts or color bleeding. A very top notch
transfer with little to no problems. There was
something I noticed while watching the widescreen
transfer (you really think I would waste my time
watching the full frame version on the other side?)
and it happened during the first Rollerball game.
Boxes would come up to inform us who the players were
and when they appeared on the left side the first part
of their names were cut off. I thought that widescreen
was so you could see EVERYTHING. A very minor problem
though considering how good the transfer is. A full
screen version is also offered on the other side but
do not waste your time with it. Full frame is a
terrible way to watch a movie as 50% of the picture is lost.
I actually tried it just to see how bad it was. You
couldn't even see what was going on in the games half
the time. Terrible. If you watch full frame over
widescreen then consider your IQ reduced by 50% as
well as the movie.
The sound is another good thing from MGM. Very
explosive especially during the games themselves.
Another fine soundtrack from MGM.
The extras included are kind of cheap but I'm suprised
to see this many on a bomb like this movie. The Rob
Zombie music video is pretty bad but everything else is OK.
Overall, this movie is not as bad as everyone says it
is. It's mindless fun to watch on a weeekend and share
with friends. I've seen a lot worse (cough, cough, Jason X, the latest
in the 'Friday the 13th' series) and this is not one of them.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
