RIP James Caan

Most of the obits focused on his roles as the hot-headed brother Sonny in The Godfather flicks but to a Sci-Fi nerd like myself he was more memorable as the greatest athlete ever in Rollerball, a dystopian story with corporations running the world. The weird part was how humanity’s long-standing problems were gone: hunger, poverty, environmental decline, etc.; when Kapitalism loves to exacerbates them so Soylent Green got it right. Despite the nitpicking, Rollerball is more a story about how the powers that be need bread and circuses to distract the masses and the made-up sport is the story in the same vein the car stunts are in the Fast and Furious franchise. Years later, James returned to the genre with Alien Nation, a very weird and silly buddy-cop movie involving an alien race, a new angle to Affirmative Action and drugs. He had a funny cameo in The Simpsons and to younger audiences, his last big opportunity was the relatively new Holiday fave Elf as Buddy’s biological dad.

Thanks for everything James. Drama and Action were more your thing, one day I’ll get around to seeing Thief since any film with Tangerine Dream doing the soundtrack is always worth investigating.

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