Rollerball (2002)

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Year:	2002
Country of origin:	USA / Germany / Japan
Director:	John McTiernan
Genre:	Dreadful remake.
Starring:	Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn
Rating:	1/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246894/
Tagline:	Get In The Game.
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Modern remake of a seventies cult classic that, shamefully, I am yet to see.

It's the near future and an ultra-violent game called Rollerball is the next big thing, where players skim around an oval rink, the object of the game to hurl a solid metal ball against what looks like a dustbin lid to score a goal. There's motorbikes involved, too, which the skaters hang off the back of to pick up speed.
Evil TV executive Alexis Petrovich, played by a sleep walking Jean Reno, usually magnificent, here seeming like someone who took one too many tranquilisers the night before, has figured out that the ratings increase as the violence intensifies so begins to bribe and coerce players into increasingly bad behaviour, his ultimate aim to see death on the playing field.

Now, I have no idea how this stands up to the original, but I can only guess that the source material is better than this mess of a movie.
The whole thing feels confused and only half-concieved, as if the writer gave up the ghost half way through scripting and John 'Die Hard' 'Predator' McTiernan directs like a man who has never seen a camera before, much less helmed two of the best action movies of the 80's. I could go on: the dreadful nu-metal soundtrack, the woefully cinematography, the fact that at no point do you actually have one suffering clue as to what's actually happening.
But I won't.
Needless to say, avoid, though I will still be checking out the original at some point in the near future.
It just can't be as bad as this.