The two-hour length, intentionally or not, almost results in two different movies. The first hour, once it establishes Dr. Omalu's credentials and personality, walks the viewer through the initial cases that landed in Dr. Omalu's lap, leading him (at his own expense in most cases) into the revealing of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of deceased former NFL players. The second hour becomes the story of the NFL's efforts to squash Dr. Omalu's research and Dr. Omalu personally. By necessity, the second hour is the more melodramatic of the two, but in many ways the first hour is the harder to watch.
(What follows is spoiler-ish, so if you need to be preserved from all information about the film, stop reading now. As the basic facts of the story are pretty much public record now, I don't feel I'm giving away too much below, but you've been warned at any rate.)
(Seriously, stop if you want no spoilers.)
(Stop now.)
OK, moving on then.
Second hour first. If the film's implications are to be believed, the degree to which the NFL did everything in its power to destroy Dr. Omalu is beyond the pale in every possible way. That they attacked his professional credibility is established -- attempting to bully him into retracting his research, for example? That really did happen. Trying to thwart Dr. Omalu by attacking his boss Cyril Wecht, the coroner? That I did not know, and the film is opaque in its suggestion (apparently, once Dr. Omalu departed from his job, all charges against Wecht were dropped, in a suspiciously convenient coincidence). Still, there were other things the NFL did in their ongoing smear campaign against Dr. Omalu that are not included in the film (essentially commandeering a medical journal for the purpose of attacking his research, for example) that are especially damning, but probably don't translate into film drama terribly well.
A certain amount of dramatic license is not surprisingly employed, in which actions by multiple characters are condensed to one or two characters in the film. For example, as mentioned in the previous post, former Chicago Bear Dave Duerson is portrayed in a confrontation with Dr. Omalu that by all evidence did not happen in real life. As well, it's not clear to me that the specific confrontation between Duerson and former Philadelphia Eagle Andre Watters portrayed in the film actually happened, but Duerson did have contentious encounters with a number of players who sought help from the NFL's pension fund for dealing with their brain trauma-related maladies.
A good bit of this half of the movie portrays the effect of this siege on Dr. Omalu's personal life, which for some will be a distraction from the "main point" of the movie and for some will be the "main point" of the movie. From a dramatic point of view, Dr. Omalu's wife is used as little more than plot device in the film, which is a tremendous waste of Gugu Mbatha-Raw. This film will by no means pass the "Bechdel test" in its portrayal of its female characters. On the other hand, the NFL itself doesn't really pass the "Bechdel test" either.
Back to the first half. This portion of the film is more engaging as film than the second, which starts to look like any number of other movies pretty quickly. Dr. Omalu's credentials are established in winning fashion, as well as his quirky personality and driven nature. You end up with the impression that he's perhaps an odd duck, but he's all right.
The film is not afraid to portray Dr. Omalu's Catholicism as an essential part of his character without necessarily bashing you over the head with it. I doubt that anyone who makes such lists will ever count Concussion as a "faith-based" film, but to leave out that aspect of the film's portrayal of its main character would be to assess the film incorrectly.
Some of the most striking work in the first half of the film is done by actors playing two of the first former players to be (posthumously) diagnosed by Dr. Omalu with CTE. If David Morse's screen time as Mike Webster was any longer he'd be getting awards talk tossed in his direction; he is unrecognizable, and unflinching in portraying the agonizing decline of the longtime Pittsburgh Steelers center, and the horrifying lengths to which he went trying to ease his symptoms (it's shocking enough, but the description of Webster's decline in the book League of Denial is frankly more explicit and more horrifying, although this film does portray one instance of perhaps Webster's most horrifying self-treatment). Another former Steeler, Justin Strzelczyk, is portrayed by Matthew Willig; his time on screen is even less, but effective, and his death in a fiery automotive crash is one of the more gasp-inducing moments in the film. (Interestingly, Willig is a former NFL player; his thoughts on the role are noted in this video clip.) Some dramatic telescoping is evident in this half of the film as well, but perhaps not as much as in the second half.
Short conclusions:
Filmmaking observations and opinions: I have no problem if Will Smith rides this film to an Oscar nomination. He probably hasn't disappeared into a role this effectively since, I don't know, Six Degrees of Separation? Let the man be rewarded. Albert Brooks as Wecht is of course Albert Brooks. Alec Baldwin, aside from occasional bad attempts at what I gather is supposed to be a Louisiana accent or dialect or something, is reasonably effective in one of his more understated turns, playing Dr. Julian Bailes. Casting Luke Wilson as Roger Goodell is way too generous to Goodell, but Wilson does bring an appropriately smarmy touch to the role. Some of the villains seem a bit overplayed (Mike O'Malley as another medical examiner in the Pittsburgh office, Arliss Howard as Joseph Maroon), while some of the most serious villains in the NFL's response seem underplayed or ignored. Dr. Elliot Pellman (played by Paul Reiser), a rheumatologist and sometime team doctor for the New York Jets, doesn't get much air time at all, yet he was the most belligerent (and bald-faced lying) mouthpiece for the NFL in its Big Tobacco-style full denial phase, in his role as chair of the league's laughably named Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MBTI) Committee.
As to the film's subject: it is about Dr. Bennet Omalu first and foremost. See the film? Yes. Should it be the last word in informing yourself on the subject? No. The aforementioned book is still probably the most informative starting point, and the PBS Frontline episode derived from it (which you can watch here) is also worth the time. Other possible sources for getting more informed will be explored in a future blog entry.
David Morse as Mike Webster in Concussion
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