Concussion – Film Review by Frank L.

Director: Peter Landesman
Writers: Peter Landesman, Jeanne Marie Laskas (GQ article “Game Brain”)
Stars: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks

In 2009, Jeanne Marie Laskas published an article in GQ exposing the attempted cover up by the National Football League of the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in American football players. Laskas combined with Landesman in writing the script in this film. The hero is Dr. Bennett Omalu , a young Nigerian forensic pathologist, who is the possessor of a dazzling number of degrees in various disciplines. He therefore approached his work as a forensic pathologist from more than one perspective. In relation to his work carrying out autopsies, he not only wanted to know how somebody died but also, if the symptoms were out of the ordinary, why the person died. Accordingly he was puzzled by the complete mental collapse of a fifty year old former Pittsburgh Steeler whose life preceding his death was one of mental implosion. He approached the problem scientifically by having various laboratory tests carried out on the footballer’s brain and by observing American Football being played. The combination of the two revealed to him the cause of the mental implosion.

The film tells the story of the initial reticence of his supervisor, the outright hostility of a colleague and the determined fangs of the NFL to try to destroy and rubbish both him and his findings. The outlines of the story are not unfamiliar- think of the tobacco industry in relation to smoking and the Roman Catholic Church in relation to child sexual abuse where the truth is placed at an institutional level far below the reputation of the institution.  It is a David and Goliath story. Of course there are dirty tricks and that ought to have enlivened the story but the direction fails in this department.

The story ought to have made an impressive film. There is nothing wrong with Will Smith’s performance as Omalu but he is given in the script some fairly clunky speeches to deliver, not least in the witness box in an opening court room sequence. Gugu Mwatha-Raw has a part which comes from the world of a woman whose role is to support the man in her life. It is a part as written which gives little opportunity to her to create a woman of more than two dimensions. There are fine performances by Alec Baldwin who plays a long-time American Football league doctor, Dr.Julian Bailes and by Albert Brooks as Dr. Omalu’s head of department Dr. Cyril Wecht. However the story moves at a ponderous pace. This is a good story but Concussion as a film does not do the story proud in the telling.