(2001)
PG13
Stars: Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Oleg Taktarov, Naveen Andrews
Director: John McTiernan
Writers: Larry Ferguson, John Pogue. Based on the short story and screenplay by William Harrison.
High speed chases on roller blades, motorcycles and in cars make up the bulk of this very lousy film. As for the storyline, there are only about 20-minutes worth in the whole movie.
The 1975 original starred James Caan as a roller-skating gladiator in the year 2005. Now in this 2001 remake we get Chris Klein (American Pie, Election ) and LL Cool J pretending to be motorcycling behemouths in a daredevil sport where the high stakes action is manipulated by a crazed franchise operator named Petrovich (Jean Reno, who has surely had better days as an actor than appearing in this claptrap).
Petrovich doesn’t care how many on his teams bite the dust. The more mayhem he creates, the higher the betting. When top performer Jonathan Cross (Klein) discovers his ruthless tactics, Petrovich plans to kill him off too.
Lotta says: Rollerball is a colossal music-blasting bore from start to finish; horrid acting on Reno’s part. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is pretty but so what. It’s laughable that someone read this script and greenlighted the project. There’s hardly enough for a short story here.