Sony Offers Free Admission to Concussion for NFL Players

Set up as an underdog story, Concussion follows Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith), introduced to us in a courtroom, rattling off his rather impressive list of accomplishments, from a series of medical degrees and specializations to his current work on his MBA. “I need your help to tell the world what happened to you”.

Smith portrays Omalu as caring and determined, an outsider who isn’t beholden to football. Landesman said, however, that the movie made cuts to make the film better and closer to the original story.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to see an early screening of the film Concussion starring Will Smith, written and directed by Peter Landesman, based on the article Game Brain that appeared in GQ.

His study, in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh’s pathology department, led to the discovery that the former players were suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, an asymptomatic brain disease.

Plenty of players around the league have already seen the film, many of which have found the film to be really insightful.

While Omalu’s trenchant views have run into predictable opposition from advocates and fans of America’s most-watched pastime, he insists he is neither anti-football nor anti-sport.

As the end result is largely a biography, some of the surrounding details get short shrift and lose impact, particularly the everyday struggles of the players who find their minds slipping away and don’t know why. After a showing with 70 former players and their families, Sports Illustrated’s MMQB blog described Concussion as “a panic-inducing horror flick” for some attendees. In the case of a recently deceased Pittsburgh Steelers center (David Morse), it turns out that a lifetime of head-on collisions-even when wearing a helmet-may have slowly robbed the man of his sanity, leaving him broke, homeless and confused. “This game is handsome”, Prema says at one point, while Bailes waxes about its appeal: “It’s incredibly violent … and then, suddenly, it’s Shakespeare”.

“The NFL or anybody trotting out a number of documented concussions as an indicator that they are doing a good job is a misappropriation of the science”, he argues.

“If people begin to believe that my watching this is supporting which is essentially an evil industry”, Quinn said, “if this movie begins to change the mindset that way, the National Football League is going to have a very serious hole”.