I’m not that big of a fan of football, regardless of whether it’s high school, college, or pro. Sure, I might watch the Super Bowl each year or follow the records of various teams here and there, but in all honesty watching people pummel each other on a field with such incredible force over and over again honestly isn’t my cup of tea. With that being said, I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much I thoroughly enjoyed watching Will Smith’s latest football-based movie titled Concussion.
The film is based on the true story of a Dr. Bennet Omalu (played by Smith), who uncovers the truth about brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions throughout the course of their career. Omalu is a forensic pathologist in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania who begins to learn of this disease when he is tasked to do the autopsy on former Pittsburg Steeler center Mike Webster who died at a relatively young age (50 years old) with little to no signs of anything wrong in his body. After finding nothing during the standard autopsy, Omalu uses his own money to run a battery of medical tests, convinced there’s something more going on. Eventually he discovers through some of those results the damage Mike Webster’s brain suffered during his career, as well as the disease itself, which he goes on to name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). When other NFL players begin to die in tragic ways similar to Webster, Omalu realizes through their autopsies that the disease is far worse than just one isolated case. With the help of former Steelers team doctor Julian Bailes (played by Alec Baldwin), it becomes Omalu’s quest to expose the dangers of football to the NFL and to the world itself. But to make that happen, he also faces an uphill battle with an organization that really doesn’t want the world to ultimately know any of those truths he found.
The reason why I enjoyed this movie so much is that it felt much like a David and Goliath type story with David being Omalu and Goliath being the NFL. And while I have seen many other football-based films before, this was the only one that never actually took place on the field itself. Instead, it focused more on the off-the-field heart-wrenching stories of both the players who were suffering from CTE, as well as of Omalu, who experienced such backlash in each of his attempts to make such a terrible disease known.
Sadly, I learned by the end of this movie that almost a third of all pro football players will eventually succumb to this disease. That’s a hefty price to pay for such a small number of years bashing helmets against each other repeatedly. Maybe that’s why I never have enjoyed football much because I don’t believe our bodies were ever made to endure such an amount of blunt force again and again. I feel similarly about most violent sports like boxing and hockey. But unfortunately, the fact remains that even with the amount of disease and injury that a mind and body might go through playing any of these high contact sports, and even with actual proof of it coming from doctors like Omalu, people will still continue to play them, because of the rush of the win, the cheers of the crowds, and the glory their ego sustains through it all.
I myself am grateful that those things never beckoned me enough to pursue any of those sports, especially football. Because at my 6’5”, 170-pound frame, I probably would have sustained a permanently injury with my first contact hit. Nevertheless, Concussion truly sheds light into one of the biggest downfalls of the most popular sport in America, and Smith has definitely emerged as an awards front runner once again for his incredible portrayal of Omalu. Overall, I whole-heartedly give this film 4 out of 5 stars and strongly recommend it as a must-see…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson