In an age where major layoffs are happening more and more frequently while the rich become richer, it’s not that hard to see that the game Jewison was actually talking about in 1975 has only escalated in how dangerous it is in the decades since.

| Apr 4, 2025

Jewison provides passionate leadership with this Kubrick-ian take on a strange dystopia, generating an intriguing sense of intimidation and frustration as he carefully realizes a mental breakthrough.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 12, 2025

Rollerball released as a thrilling future shock yet to this day it maintains a sharp contemporary bite. It’s highlighted with slick production values and brimming with astute social commentary. And its all accented by a touch of violent 70s exploitation.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 19, 2025

Rollerball is an okay movie with nothing new to say.

| May 9, 2023

Like many paranoid thrillers and dystopian science-fiction stories of the 1970s, Rollerball is a metaphor for the decade's widespread mistrust of political and cultural systems.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 3, 2022

It's meant to be satirical, but it's not that far off the mark; in many ways it merely highlights the painful realities of a capitalistic, corporate-dominated society.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 2, 2022

It is a story of several layers, none very complicated but all absorbing to watch.

| Aug 6, 2021

Director Norman Jewison has far more luck with his staging of the Rollerball matches (they're at once exciting and horrifying) than scripter William Harrison has in condemning this futureworld with anything more than boilerplate lip service.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 9, 2021

If this is the future, take me back to Raquel Welch and Kansas City Bomber.

| Nov 27, 2019

Jewison's extreme-sports future shock bundles together a paranoid political thriller, a McLuhan-drunk media satire, ultraviolent exploitation, reverent respect for faddish athletic pursuits and enough zoom shots to make Robert Altman blush.

| May 30, 2018

The signs are still there, and if anything, they're more pronounced than they were in 1975. Rollerball is first and foremost, a good movie. It has strong characters, a good plot, and lots of action. It is also a social commentary.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 30, 2018

A science fiction masterpiece and exciting action film.

| Apr 22, 2017

With its sluggish pacing, Rollerball gradually loses momentum between its slickly constructed game sequences

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 31, 2015

Inside the arena, it's a fantastic action movie, but outside, it's starchy and pretentious.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 5, 2008

James Caan, on roller skates, is trying to save the world. This needs a bit of explaining, which is only the beginning of the trouble with Rollerball.

| Aug 4, 2008

Norman Jewison's sensational futuristic drama about a world of Corporate States stars James Caan in an excellent performance as a famed athlete who fights for his identity and free will.

| Aug 4, 2008

Seems to being going around in circles trying to say something but is not sure about what it wants to say, as it keeps stumbling around every bend.

| Original Score: C | Jan 24, 2008

The performances of Caan and Richardson are excellent, and the rollerball sequences are fast-paced and interesting.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 5, 2007

Lifeless, uninspired, and crammed with enough hints of intellectual consistency to give the socially conscious critical establishment shivers of excitement.

| Jun 5, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2006