Directed by: Peter Landesman
Starring: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks, David Morse, Luke Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Concussion begins in 2002 as the life of Hall of Fame Steeler Mike Webster is quickly falling apart. He lives out of his pickup truck, trying desperately for relief from his eroding mental and physical ailments. He knows something is wrong, but he can not explain it. He rambles like an unkempt homeless man. A teammate and former team doctor both try to help Mike, but he soon dies of cardiac arrest.
Webster's body is assigned to Dr. Bennet Omalu (Smith) at the county coroner's office, who wonders aloud why Webster died at 50 without any apparent physical health issues present. His patient and exacting method of research flusters his superiors, but it is this method that allows Dr. Omalu to discover a frightening truth. "Football killed Mike Webster," he tells his superior Dr. Cyril Hecht (Brooks). Dr. Omalu believes, with sufficient scientific knowledge to back up his findings, that the human body has no mechanism in which to soften the blow when the brain is jarred within the skull. The brain is a free-floating organ immersed in fluid. When there is a blow to the head, the brain bounces off the skull violently. In his words, "repeated physical trauma chokes the brain," because the brain releases proteins which begin to slow brain function.
Dr. Omalu coins the condition as CTE (I won't attempt to spell out the medical term) and soon other former players are diagnosed with it after committing suicide or suffering an untimely death. Dr. Omalu naively believes the NFL will be happy to hear about this information so they can protect its players. He finds the only thing the NFL wants to protect is the bottom line. "This is a corporation that owns a day of the week. The day churches used to own," Dr. Hecht tells Omalu. He is not incorrect.
The more accurate the science, the more the NFL wants to sweep it under the rug. The NFL conducted previous studies on the long-term effects of concussions and head trauma, but concluded that there were no substantial issues stemming from them. They were either very, very wrong or chose to value dollars over player health. However, as the number of former players dying from CTE complications increases, the league is soon forced to do something. It takes years for the league to even meet with Dr. Omalu in person.
Will Smith plays the Nigerian-born Omalu with equal parts compassion and passion. He "speaks" to the bodies of the dead, asking for their help in discovering how they died. As his terrifying diagnosis becomes more apparent, he almost wishes he didn't know. "I wish I had never met Mike Webster," he tells his wife. The NFL puts its own not-so-subtle pressure on Omalu to drop the whole thing. He refuses, which leads to temporary disillusionment with a country he once believed was just below heaven in the universal pecking order.
Concussion works the best when it presents the science of CTE and Dr. Omalu's increasingly frustrated efforts to persuade the NFL to do the right thing. The NFL would rather possibly spend billions later covering medical costs for former players than actually do something to make the game safer now. They feel it would dilute their product. Judging by the money and TV ratings football generates, they were foolhardy in their thinking. Dr. Omalu's courtship with his future wife (Raw) tends to slow things down. We learn enough about Omalu by how he conducts himself and how he respects his profession. The domestic scenes act as a needless detour.
The film's most powerful scenes involve the tragic disintegration of the lives of Webster, Andre Waters, Dave Duerson, and others who are trapped within their own minds by this crippling illness. They can no longer function properly, but are cursed with the knowledge that something is definitely wrong, but don't know what. It is beyond sad that they did not live to find out or be treated.
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