Forty minutes into Concussion, Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith, turns to his future wife, Prema Mutiso, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and tells her: “God did not intend for us to play football.”
Sitting on the couch in their apartment, watching a clip reel of NFL hits and falls on a small television in front of them, Omalu shows Mutiso a peach in a mason jar full of water that is meant to represent the way human brains float unprotected in our skulls. He shakes the jar back and forth, punctuating each motion to indicate separate hits. The peach begins to break down, and the camera toggles back to NFL footage.
Concussion is Sony’s upcoming adaptation of the true story of Omalu, a Nigerian-born neurologist, who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or CTE, a degenerative brain disease — in beloved Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster.
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