Struggling against finding out the reasons behind the mysterious illness of the football players, who suffers from a brain damage, Dr. Bennet Omalo, an American immigrant, and an ambitious pathologist, who reveals the horrible truth, the thing that makes his life in danger and brings terrible for him.
Concussion does to the sports film what I was sincerely hoping it would avoid: it dramatizes its subject in such an unbelievable way that it becomes nothing more than mindless propaganda.
Landesman has pushed too hard to make this story fit into a dramatic mold, alternating melodrama and romance with those earnest warnings in a way that is more ungainly than effective.
While "Concussion" has some fine things going for it, notably science and Will Smith, it lacks the exciting, committed filmmaking that rises to the level of its outrageous topic.
All the elements of a solid drama are here, yet in trying to overplay every single one of them Landesman winds up diminishing the whole, reaching for importance but coming away with a handful of adequacy.
Even Smith's solid performance cannot salvage this dullfest, and when someone as charismatic as Will Smith can't inject energy into a film, you know it's bad.