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Traveta reviews
MGM
- Cert: R
- Cat.no: 1002801
- Running time: 100 minutes
- Year: 2002
- Pressing: 2002
- Region(s): 1, NTSC
- Chapters: 32
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, Spanish, French
- Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 18
- Price: $26.99
- Extras: Animated Menus, Trailers, FutureSport: The Stunts of Rollerball, Rob Zombie MusicVideo “Never Gonna Stop”, Interactive RollerballYearbook, Horsemen Audio Commentary.
Director:
- John McTiernan
Cast:
- Jonathan Cross: Chris Klein
Petrovich: Jean Reno
Marcus Ridley: LL Cool J
Aurora: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Sanjay: Naveen Andrews
Denekin: Oleg Taktarov
Serokin: David Hemblen
Coach Olga: Janet Wright
Halloran: Andrew Bryniarski
Katya: Kata Dobo
Herself: Pink
Rollerball.The film that recieved raving reviews andbox office receipts that threatened to toppleTitanic‘stotal and become the highest grossing movieof our time… not. On the contrary, this moviewas supposed to be out in August 2001, then pushed tothe lucrative month of February. And what’s that? Didit bomb? Oh yes. It bombed. Rollerball made around$20m in the US. It did that bad.
Obviously the intense action must have cost at least$90m. Okay, despite the horrible reviewsand bad reputation I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t bethat bad. And to my suprise it was not.
Rollerball tells the story of Jonathan (Chris Klein), a young sportsplayer who turns down a contract for the NHL to be thestar of a futuristic sport that rules Europe -Rollerball. The games ensue and suddenly players arebeing injured just to get ratings. Jonathan catchesonto it after he gets gelp from two fellow players,Rebecca Romaijn Stamos and LL Cool J.
The movie takes a series of plot twists to try to explain the dryconspiracy plot and what ultimately leads to a suprisingly violent ending.
The visual presentation is very intese. The Rollerballgame sequences are filmed very well by director JohnMcTiernan. Very fast and often violent games areportrayed well and shows you how good of a director he is.
Now, lets get into the disc. The video, as always fromMGM, is very good. The transfer is bright with hardlyany artifacts or color bleeding. A very top notchtransfer with little to no problems. There wassomething I noticed while watching the widescreentransfer (you really think I would waste my timewatching the full frame version on the other side?)and it happened during the first Rollerball game.
Boxes would come up to inform us who the players wereand when they appeared on the left side the first partof their names were cut off. I thought that widescreenwas so you could see EVERYTHING. A very minor problemthough considering how good the transfer is. A fullscreen version is also offered on the other side butdo not waste your time with it. Full frame is aterrible way to watch a movie as 50% of the picture is lost.I actually tried it just to see how bad it was. Youcouldn’t even see what was going on in the games halfthe time. Terrible. If you watch full frame overwidescreen then consider your IQ reduced by 50% aswell as the movie.
The sound is another good thing from MGM. Veryexplosive especially during the games themselves.Another fine soundtrack from MGM.
The extras included are kind of cheap but I’m suprisedto see this many on a bomb like this movie. The RobZombie music video is pretty bad but everything else is OK.
Overall, this movie is not as bad as everyone says itis. It’s mindless fun to watch on a weeekend and sharewith friends. I’ve seen a lot worse (cough, cough, Jason X, the latestin the ‘Friday the 13th’ series) and this is not one of them.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALLEmailTraveta
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.