Review of Concussion (2015) by Lucien S — 21 Jan 2016

One of the few original themes in a winter season of dreadful remakes, sequels, and franchises; yet, unfortunately, when a fresh idea is gestated mindlessly, the novelty alone is insufficient to save the film, one that is a bomb thanks primarily to a faulty premise and bad choices.

From square one, the entire didactic concept faces an uphill struggle for audience empathy, given that most football players are paid outrageous sums for their efforts, especially relative to any typical USA worker who faces a tough daily grind and does not have the luxury of part-time employment. Professional football athletes are the modern version of gladiators and the primary justification for their obscenely high remunerations rests upon the concept that they face potential injury and death each time they take to the field. Football is a bloody brutal sport of warriors and, as such, suffering wounds, both minor and extreme, is part of the entire package. If the intention is to avoid such negatives, that is an admirable goal in a humanitarian sense but, then, the stratospheric salaries of the football combatants should drop dramatically to reflect the removal of risk. Somehow, if that tradeoff were proposed to the typically indulgent, materialistic, and highly consumerist athletes, specifically far lesser money for much reduced risk, they would opt instead for greater money and greater risk any day of the week. That is the nature of the the modern gladiators and, where some might judge trading danger for megabucks to be a reckless tactic, others might deem it to be merely a brave choice.

Aside from this massive conceptual flaw in the story, badly exacerbated by its annoying preachy tone, the second greatest failing is the selection of Will Smith to play the lead. Although he seems to be a congenial fellow, between his intermittent, hokey, African accent and his monotone performance, he is a living and walking sleeping pill posing as a genuine thespian. This film, for what it is, would have benefited greatly if a radically superior actor such as Denzel Washington had been given the lead role; for one thing, Washington never would have switched in and out of a faux African accent in such an amateur and silly manner. Sometimes it makes much more sense to pay the extra monies necessary to obtain excellence rather than settle for mediocrity; it's the difference between fine filet, in the exceptional talents of Washington, versus expired, foul hamburger, in the blundered and limited range performance inhabited by a mere personality such as Smith, a member of the Hollywood flash who is merely famous for being famous, and not much else.

UPDATE: it appears that the arrogant Smith and his silly wife are protesting the exclusion of black nominees from the 2016 Academy Awards. They are incensed and screaming, "discrimination???" Pure NONSENSE and SOUR GRAPES!

Where is the discrimination in an Oscars event that is overseen by an Academy board whose president is black? Where is the discrimination in a TV award event that will be emceed by a black host? Where is the discrimination in an organization that has awarded its highest humanitarian award to a variety of blacks? Given that there were virtually no Asian nominees in 2016, shouldn't they be screaming too? Or maybe people should become more specific in their petty grievances and rail against the lack of nominees originating from Iceland, Monaco, Nepal, Latvia, etc? Time for the petulant Smith family to accept reality: by any higher standards of acting, Smith's performance in "Concussion" was uneven and dreary, no matter what his various deluded groupies might imagine to the contrary. However, if the Smiths genuinely believe that the Academy is discriminatory, why don't they try a novel approach and start their own award event to rival the Academy honors? Instead of demanding and forcing affirmative action to advance their self-serving cause, in yet another subversion of merit for the purpose of lauding inferiority, let the Smiths and their sympathizers launch their own venture so that they can celebrate and extol their own mediocrity, each and every year. Anyway, if nothing else, the Smiths have proven incontrovertibly that the alleged rationale for involvement in "Concussion" had little to do with any form of social activism; instead, the Smiths are mere shallow narcissists, dedicated to garnering populist adulation to the exclusion of any loftier values.