Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org By Summer Mickey
Staff Writer Last year, on December 25, the movie Concussion, an American biographical sports medical drama film, was released. The movie was directed and written by Peter Landesman and the starring cast includes: Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, Stephen Moyer as Dr. Ron Hamilton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Prema Mutiso, Alec Baldwin as Dr. Julian Bailes, Eddie Marsan as Dr. Steven DeKosky, and Luke Wilson as Roger Goodell. “If you think about it, Concussion has a killer comic cast, and it's probably why this manly melodrama narrowly escapes Landesman's heavy hand. The cast curls the edge of tragedy just enough to let us feel the human condition in all its screwed up wonder,” says Katherine Monk from Ex-Press.com. The plot of this story takes you through the tragedies of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and the rollercoaster that the first doctor to discover it, Dr. Bennet Omalu, goes through in hopes to spread the word about this traumatic head disease usually found in athletes with a history of repetitive head injuries. “Works very well, first drawing us into Omalu's pursuit of understanding ... and then into his fight to get the NFL to recognize his research and stop covering up the dangers of professional football.” Says James Kendrick from the Q Network Film Desk. It all starts out in 2002, when a former Pittsburgh Steelers player, Mike Webster was found dead in his pickup truck because of severe brain damage. Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist with the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania coroner's office, took on the challenge of finding out the reason of his death. Omalu inferred that the reason of the severe brain damage was because of several blows to the head in football, which led to CTE. Although, over the next few years, Omalu discovers that three other dead former NFL players, Terry Long, Justin Strzelczyk and Andre Waters, had deadly symptoms very similar to the one he was researching. Dr. Omalu persuades a NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, to show his findings to a committee on player safety in the NFL. However, the NFL does not take him and his research seriously, and they don't even allow him to be in the room for the presentation, forcing Dr. Julian Bailes to give it for him. Afterwards, Omalu is put to considerable pressure to back down from his efforts on the CTE case. Then, soon after, Omalu's wife, Prema, suffers a miscarriage after being stalked in their dream home outside of Pittsburgh. The Omalu’s are forced to leave Pittsburgh and move into Lodi, California, where Omalu takes a job with the San Joaquin County coroner's office. Omalu is vindicated when former NFL Players Association executive Dave Duerson commits suicide from growing cognitive problems. Fortunately, Omalu is then allowed to address an NFLPA conference on concussions and CTE issues, and then the NFL is forced to take more action on concussion and brain injuries. Lastly, Omalu is offered a job as chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia, but decides to turn it down in order to continue working with autopsies. Comments are closed.
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October 2018
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