An Interesting Story Becomes an Acceptable Film
Writer/director Peter Landesman's Concussion tells the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian forensic neuropathologist with the Allegheny County Coroner's office who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopahty (CTE), which is the disease of the brain caused by multiple head traumas. Dr. Omalu, played here by Will Smith, begins his journey unsuspectingly with his autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who died young after years of troubling behavior. Concussion faces the same dramatic problem that most films based on true stories do, which is that the outcome is well known by the audience, and it never quite clears that hurdle, at least not with as much height and power as would make the film truly rewarding for the viewers.
Will Smith anchors the film with a charming performance as a man who is brilliant in his profession and somewhat naive in other areas, while Albert Brooks and Alec Baldwin add a good deal of personality to the proceedings as the county coroner and former team doctor for the Steelers, respectively. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is also a welcome addition as a Kenyan transplant living with Dr. Omalu from a placement through his church, though their resulting love story lacks the intriguing nature of the CTE research, and ultimately becomes more of a distraction than a relevant piece of the story (though it does add some nice character moments for Smith to play).
Concussion's subject matter and cast keep things just compelling enough, but the pacing is consistently a hair too slow throughout the film. Not helping matters is a slow lead-up to the disease's inevitable discovery, as well as the aforementioned attention paid to Dr. Omalu's personal life. There is little urgency to the CTE discovery and publication, because ultimately there's not a lot to uncover about the disease once it's been discovered. History and the fact that this film exists makes it clear that CTE is no myth, so the audience won't question the validity of the research. Unfortunately, the stretch of the film following the study's publication is not as tense as it could be, because the fight against the NFL for the league to accept and work from Dr. Omalu's research leads to many dead ends and a relatively disappointing success in the film's finale.
These are problems inherent to the true story the film is based on, and it would be irresponsible to overly inflate the story for the sake of dramatization. Spotlight is a recent example of a film that similarly had a well known outcome to its investigative plot: that the Catholic Church was systematically hiding the abuse of children by many of its priests. It's a film rich with information—the material with which the journalists needed to build a rock-solid story that even the most devout Boston Catholics couldn't deny—while Concussion presents a story that is similarly interesting, yet lacking the factual depth to be as riveting. There's simply not much to the story once CTE is discovered, because the fight against the NFL did not lead to the toppling of an organization or the league-wide, top-down changes to the game that might make a dramatically satisfying conclusion to the film.
Seeing Mike Webster (David Morse) live out his final, tortured days, as well as the downfalls of other young retired players, is quite unsettling, particularly as the lives of these men—some with families—deteriorate with no apparent solution. Outside of the scientific facts presented onscreen, these are the dramatically powerful moments that will endure. Landesman and his team have made a perfectly acceptable film from this story, though there may be a tighter, faster 90-minute version hiding inside its 122 minute runtime. Concussion is a fine movie about a very important subject matter, and while it won't overly impress you, at the very least it may leave you with a clearer idea of CTE, and the NFL's relationship to it, than you had before. For a doctor and his research fighting an uphill battle, that's a success.