Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Concussion'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

​There are few things as amazing as enjoying football on a Sunday. It's the chance for friends to come together, decked out in their finest team gear and enjoy good eats and good times as everyone settles into watch the game and all of its poetic nature unfold before our eyes. We witness glory, we witness defeat, it's an experience unlike anything else. 

However, in our world there is always balance and an opposite side to a coin, which means there is a risk to football as well. We know of the obvious ones, the fact that a man can be hurt playing the game but that's why they get paid the big bucks and tough it out for the team, right? Well that line of thinking is now being reconsidered. Because there are other risks inherent to the game, ones that are unseen and were only recently discovered as is chronicled in the fascinating film; Concussion.

Dr. Bennet Omalu takes great pride in his work as a pathologist for the Pittsburgh Coroner's Office. To him the science of death relates directly with how a person lived, helping him determine the exact nature of how a person passed on and while this notion tends to get his coworkers to roll their eyes, it is proven correct when the body of Mike Webster, a Hall of Fame Football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers arrives in his office. Because while it appears that Mike died of a heart attack at age 50, the self-mutilation that Bennet finds piques his curiosity and as he digs deeper, he discovers something strange within Mike's brain, a new disease that may be affecting professional football players and as more men from the sport begin to suffer from it, Bennet will reveal his findings to the NFL and the public in the hopes of protecting future players from this illness. But that will mean changes to the game and asking that of the biggest sport in America, one that is beloved just the way that it is, will prove to be one incredible challenge. 

Based on a true story, this is at its core one frightening film. After all, football fans and non-football fans are all aware of the CTE mess and the NFL's litigation that went with it, but that news was merely scratching the surface. Here that illness is given a face by way of the actors portraying these unfortunate men who sacrificed everything on the field only to have their brains give way to something far worse and well...those scenes are hard to watch. Sure it's a performance, but there was no doubt some study that went into their erratic behavior before they took their own lives and if even a smidge of the performances are grounded in reality...then these men suffered greatly and seeing what this illness does to a man is truly uncomfortable. 

But, terror aside, Concussion succeeds as a story because it does give us a great man in Bennet. He is truly a kind soul, one without an agenda, and one that believes in helping others through and through and his fearlessness when it comes to taking on a big time corporation is inspiring to say the least. Yet despite giving us scares and an incredible plight, what matters most is that this film forces you to think about those Sunday afternoons, and the injuries that happen on the field. Suddenly, you don't feel as inclined to cheer on the hard hits we come to expect, you now want these men to make it through a game okay and perhaps that was the point of telling this story, to make us see these players as men and not warriors, and in turn...see the value of their lives and their future. 

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