Rollerballsup

The quality of John McTiernan's early films (Die Hard, Predator, Red October) is indisputable. But from Medicine Man onwards, the feedback on his films has been more mixed; most like his Thomas Crown remake while most frown upon his 13th Warrior adaptation. But in all those cases, I'll stand up for McTiernan's films because he's such an exciting, unique and fresh film maker. One film I have a lot of trouble defending, to myself that is, would be his 2002 remake of Rollerball. It's a bit shit.

Now this is a bit of a surprise since McTiernan fought long and hard, in a producing capacity, to get this made (although in retrospect perhaps film financiers could foresee what a turkey he was peddling). But here it stands; a monument to artistic misjudgement. So why's it so bad? Well the director makes several poor choices that undermine the whole story.

1/ Editing. The current trend for editing too quickly has emerged in the wake of Paul Greengrass' 2004 sequel The Bourne Supremacy. Predating that film by 2 years, McTiernan makes the mistake of copying MTV inspired directors in an effort to satirise that type of dumbed down/zero attention span action movie. In his failure he makes the type of film he was trying to comment upon. As a result he rejects the fluid camera style that makes his work unique and thus makes the frenetic action much harder to follow. In addition, the director dumps the standard orchestral score in exchange for loads of loud rock music which only succeeds in cheapening the experience even further by making it like something shat out by VH1.

2/ There's a huge action sequence in the desert in the midsection of the movie involving cars, trucks, motorcycles, and a huge transport plane. It should be the film's centrepiece. It fails miserably because McTiernan shoots the whole thing in green tinged, ultra grainy night vision. The expensive blockbuster now looks cheap, murky, confusing and like something out of a student film project. Unforgivable.

3/ Casting. The supporting cast are all cool. LL Cool J is dependably stoic as the hero's best mate, Naveen Andrews and Jean Reno do quiet bad guy and scenery chewing bad guy very well while Rebecca Romijn is the introverted, tough-but-sexy teammate/love interest. Rumour has it Nicholas Cage was up for the lead role at one point...and that would have been cool. Unfortunately they cast one of the worst actor of all time; Chris Klein. Think Keanu Reeves in Dracula or Dolph Lundgren in Johnny Mnemonic (or anything else for that matter). Klein is that bad. Worse maybe. There's a scene when he's been dragged back to the dressing room. Before he re-enters he's asked a question. His reply is so stilted and so horribly wooden it makes me cringe and want to die. It's a performance so weak it has no chance of convincing an audience that his character is real...let alone someone big enough to 'take down the man' and 'win the day'.

On the plus side the film looks amazing and...oh that's about it really.
Every director will have a misfire (just as Spielberg on 1941). But after this McTiernan went on to lie to the FBI. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go.