To all football fans – and there are millions of you – who are concerned that “Concussion” is going to take some pot shots at your favorite competitive sport … well, that’s just not what this movie is really about. The script makes sure to point out the beauty and grace of football, all while warning of its dangers. But the sharp, forcefully thrown, and very much deserved barbs are not aimed at the game or the players. They’re sent straight to the people running the National Football League, those corporate heads of the multi-billion dollar industry who, with full knowledge that the game has led to crippling injuries, mental incapacities, and death among its athletes, do practically nothing about it.
“Concussion” tells the true story of Nigerian forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) who, toiling away on autopsies in a Pittsburgh morgue in 2002, made an awful discovery: that human beings were not intended to play football. At least not the way it’s been played for the past few decades, with team members regularly getting bigger, stronger, faster, and really harming each other.
The film opens with a disturbing sight: the hulking scraggly mess of former Pittsburgh Steelers center and Pro Football Hall of Famer Mike Webster (David Morse) who, in an addled state of mind, and living in his pickup truck after abandoning his family, mentions that playing football is painful, that banging heads “is not a natural thing.”
Webster later suffers moments of (off-camera) self-mutilating insanity, and heartbreakingly pleads for help to a former football doctor (Alec Baldwin) who frustratingly can’t pinpoint what exactly is wrong with his patient. It’s not till Webster ends up on the autopsy table that Dr. Omalu labels the position of center the most violent one on the field, where “a player’s head is used as a weapon,” then follows that up with his certainty that “multiple blows to the head trigger a series of neurological events.”
It’s Dr. Omalu who posits that Webster and many other former and active football players who display signs of certain erratic behaviors are suffering from a condition called CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
The film is unflinching in its accusations, as well as in its decision to paint the NFL, and especially its commissioner Roger Goodell (a cameo by Luke Wilson) as a nest of snakes. But under the direction of former investigative journalist Peter Landesman (whose only other feature is the JFK assassination story “Parkland”), and with a superb ensemble cast, it plays out like a tightly wound thriller with all sorts of characters working for or against finding a secret at its core. It’s great entertainment with a strong message.
Will Smith absolutely vanishes into the lead role, Alec Baldwin shows a caring side in his Dr. Bailes that’s seldom seen in parts he takes, Albert Brooks carefully eases slight shades of humor into his serious role as Dr. Wecht, and David Morse continues to prove that he’s one of the best supporting actors in the business.
The story goes a little off-track with the romantic relationship developing between Dr. Omalu and Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a young woman from Nairobi. But it keeps getting right back to the subject at hand: the dangers of the game in the way that it’s played. Reports come in that other former players are cracking and/or dying, but Landesman’s cameras linger on the people in a crowded bar who are whooping it up over every head-to-head collision they see on the TV screen. Announcers on those broadcasts gleefully joke about the “hit of the week,” but the NFL continues to ignore what’s becoming an epidemic. No doubt, it’s a brave move to put this film in front of a football-crazed American audience.
Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now.
Written and directed by Peter Landesman
With Will Smith, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Albert Brooks, David Morse, Alec Baldwin
Rated PG-13
CONCUSSION
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: ‘Concussion’ doesn’t fumble the football facts