Concussion is a high-wire act: presenting a paranoid thriller about whistleblowing against an all-American pastime in a sugar-coated manner that Apple-pie-loving middle-America can swallow with ease. Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) is a Nigerian pathologist in Philadelphia who happens to perform the autopsy on Mike Webster (David Morse), a homeless, drug-addicted former-Pittsburgh Steeler who is hearing voices and numbing his pain with a taser. Dedicated to discovering the root cause of this seemingly healthy 50-year-old who has descended into madness, Omalu conducts a series of brain tests that leads him to discover Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a brain condition caused by repeated head impacts. Being bad for business, the NFL tries to bury the studies and Omalu himself. Meanwhile, Omalu finds his first girlfriend, and attempts to make an All-American life for himself in the face of corporate corruption.
The whistleblowing thriller and the Hallmarkian hagiography make for strange bedfellows in theory, but Peter Landesman uses each side to cover over the problems of the other. Neither side of the equation is a particularly good example of their respective genres – the whistleblowing thriller paints in overtly broad strokes that boil down to corporations are bad, and the Hallmark side deals in particularly ham-fisted dialogue and silly characterizations – yet, together, they reveal Landesman’s intent to expose NFL corruption while entertaining an audience who may be resistant to such a message. Besides that, Landesman is aided by good actors giving reliable performances in a film that doesn’t quite deserve them.
Up against the NFL, Omalu is aided by former team doctor Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin) and County Coroner Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks). With these two steadfast companions, Landesman sets Omalu up as a leader against the world. He receives death threats and has his name run through the mud because he is promoting people’s health over the business of football. In a sense, this is at the heart of all Hallmark Christmas movies: belief in All-American humanity is more important than corporations and business. Yet, here the business is football, a pastime that the same crowd believes in as strongly as they do Hallmark’s values.
The Hallmark half is littered with dialogue about what it means to be an American. Omalu is constantly elevating the status of America and Americans as the dream world he had in Nigeria. Though Concussion is pointedly anti-NFL and very cautious about football, Landesman wants to be seen as pro-humanity rather than anti-football. Omalu repeatedly states his intent is not to destroy the pastime, yet still makes statements like “God did not intend for us to play football.”
The contradictions within the movie are probably contractual restrictions by the NFL as a price for allowing their logo and business to be portrayed in the film. In order to tell the story accurately, Landesman had to sell the soul of the film. The toothless side of the whistleblowing thriller feels dark compared to the rather-extreme artificiality of the Hallmark biopic. The humanity of the Hallmark biopic makes the anti-corporate side far more tolerable and understandable. This isn’t to say that Concussion is good; after all, this is a movie where somebody delivers the gag-worthy line “You exemplify everything we value in an American” with a straight face. One could easily make the case that a good doc about the concussion crisis would trump this sort of namby-pamby wishy-washy filmmaking. Yet, this movie, filled with Christian references and softened by a shoehorned love story, may reach the audience who would otherwise skip a story tarnishing the NFL, and they may be the ones who need to see it the most.