Grade: A
America loves football.
This isn’t a fact I should have to defend, but here we go: In the 2014 Harris Poll, football was voted the most popular sport in America for the 30th consecutive year.
The 2014 Super Bowl drew in 112.8 million viewers, more than the Academy Awards, Winter Olympics and Grammys combined, according to the New York Times.
According to CNN Money, the 2015 Super Bowl had 114.4 million viewers and was the most watched broadcast in television history in the United States.
CNN Money also found the NFL earned an estimated $12 billion in the 2014-15 season.
We love this sport, love the violence in watching massive men barrel into each other at full speed, the excitement when a receiver catches a ball and races down the field with an army at his heel, the borderline anxiety when your team’s behind near the end of the fourth quarter, it’s fourth down and the quarterback won’t stop trying to run the damn ball.
We love football and we love a good underdog story — “Concussion” gives us both.
Our underdog is Dr. Bennet Omalu, a brilliant pathologist played beautifully by Will Smith, who performs the autopsy of former Pittsburgh Steelers’ center Mike Webster. He finds Webster’s reported depression, aggression and mental decline are related to extensive head trauma, a disease he names chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
This discovery is not met with gratitude, and so enters our powerful opponent: the bully we love to hate, the NFL.
This is the beginning of the great moral battle for truth as the league attempts to crush Omalu, even as more beloved players turn to suicide to escape the long-term consequences of the game years after they’ve hung up their helmets.
Bennet Omalu is basically the human definition of the cinnamon roll meme. He has a soft voice, a too-kind smile and is far too polite, which Smith pulls off without the performance being cheesy or forced.
Throughout the course of the film, we see Omalu slowly harden with the frustration of trying to teach something no one wants to listen to. Even while angry, Smith maintains Omalu’s overall gentle disposition and relies on facial cues to express strong emotions.
I’d mention the other actors but, honestly, they’re all outshined by Smith.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. We learned in September, Sony worked with NFL to develop the “messaging” of the film through a series of leaked emails.
Another email said some scenes were cut or changed.
To add to the overall questionable morality of the film, the AP revealed in December that Omalu might not actually be the founder of CTE. Scientists and medical professionals claimed CTE existed decades before Omalu “discovered” it, which makes me think that Omalu isn’t quite the perfect cinnamon roll I thought him to be.
I’d be a fool not to doubt the authenticity of the story after learning this, but it doesn’t change my opinion of the movie.
The story the film told, regardless of how untruthful it might be, is solid and engaging and well worth your time to go see.
