Concussion

Solid, earnest, and convincing in its premise that the NFL knew and didn’t care. Will Smith really does give a tremendous performance; if you remember back to some of his earlier works, it can be hard to reconcile those performances with the portrayal presented here. And that’s a good thing. As for the moral, maybe some of the viewers will have reservations about watching football in the future; I suspect, however, that it won’t change anything, or at least not that much. You should still see this film anyway, just so you know what you’re supporting.

Draft Day

So it's come to this: the NFL is now producing propaganda films like some 1930s dictatorship. One wonders if there is as much veracity in this exhibition as one might have found in, say, the movie within a movie in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Either way, the Sabols are either spinning in their graves, or dancing in Hell, depending. Much of this movie comes across as Stupid with a capital S, though I must grudgingly admit that there's enough entertainment here to keep the viewer engaged. This is the kind of role Kevin Costner is good at, though everyone else in the cast is basically a cardboard cutout. Watch it if you really dig sports movies; just don't let yourself fall too far under the spell of "the shield."