Alicia I love this movie so much

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

hankat6 This film is an incredible David and Goliath story. It really brings to attention the massive trauma epidemic sweeping American Football. The film itself is superbly well written with a poetic, powerful yet realistic script. The whole production is well directed and keeps the focus on the overriding story of NFL trauma and the fight for Omalu to be heard, which makes it all the more humble, modest and powerful (I've repeated that word for good reason!). To top it off, this is the best Will Smith acting I've seen. Taking into account all the things that make a film great - this film is outstanding.

slightlymad22 Concussion (2015)Plot In A Paragraph: The true story of how Pittsburgh pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Smith) uncovered the truth about brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions in the course of normal play.The sad thing is, I knew more about the mocking of Will Smith's attempted Nigerian accent, than anything else about the movie. Even him saying "Tell the truuuth" was all I could recall from the trailers. I vaguely knew the plot of the movie and that was it. I missed out on one of the best movies of 2015. Smith delivers a great performance, as does everyone else Alec Baldwin who I have never been a fan of is great, as is Albert Brooks David Morse and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. You don't need to follow American Football to understand what is going on, as I have never watched a full game in my life, let alone played it. The science is all easy to understand as is the frustration and sadness you feel watching this. Concussion is Will Smith's best movie since Seven Pounds, and sadly like that movie, this one did not find an audience either. Concussion grossed $34 million at the domestic box office, to end 2015 as the 75th highest grossing movie of the year.

blumdeluxe "Concussions" tells the story of a Nigerian doctor who comes to the United States and works in the pathology. When a few formerly famous football stars land on his table, he notices some strange connections between them and learns that the sport everybody is so crazy about could be far more dangerous than one expects.It is a tremendous story based on real happenings. For the important message alone, it is a huge win to have this film shot with a high budget and a remarkable cast. Unfortunately, the side effects of this high production value are that the movie follows the basic Hollywood principles. The story is surely worth being told but it is dramatized and interwoven with personal emotions in a way that sometimes seems to have been created mainly for the big screen. This way the sports plot gets a touch of American dream and becomes the tale of an unsung hero, that occasionally comes a bit too close to the mainstream.All in all this is an important movie produced in a way that makes it look like most Blockbusters. Worth a watch but it misses out on some potential as well.

jbirks106 This is a well-made film about an important subject. Unfortunately it degenerates into a polemic against the National Football League, elevating its principal character from forensic brain specialist to crusading hero to martyr, all the while taking liberties with basic facts in service of a narrative. One such basic fact concerns Mike Webster, on whom the first portion of the movie focuses. Webster was the victim of child abuse with mental illness on both sides of the family. He had a history of substance abuse and depression. This was before he ever played a game with the Steelers. And while Landesman encourages us to believe Webster killed himself, he actually died of a heart attack. Another basic fact involves Cyril Wecht, portrayed superbly by Albert Brooks. A keen-eyed observer may detect the JFK connection; Wecht has been a prominent assassination conspiracy theorist (Landesman's previous film "Parkland" is devoted to the assassination). Here we see Wecht being arrested and are left to assume that it's the NFL retaliating for Omalu's research. In fact Wecht was charged well BEFORE that research was published, or even known to the NFL.dCentral premise of the film: repeated concussions cause CTE. This is asserted throughout, with Omalu expansively blaming football for the players' deaths. The problem is that there is no scientific basis for this claim. According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, "there are no published epidemiological, crosssectional or prospective studies relating to modern CTE... Owing to the nature of the published studies, being case reports or pathological case series, it is not possible to determine the causality or risk factors with any certainty. As such, the speculation that repeated concussion or subconcussive impacts cause CTE remains unproven." In short, the plural of anecdote is not data. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that NFL players live LONGER than average.I realize it's too much to ask a Hollywood picture to eschew emotional appeals, narratives and love stories, even when they do harm to the movie's impact. But this movie would have been so much better served by hewing to the truth.