The Last Gladiators

In ice hockey the players called enforcers have one job: protect the team's stars and fight when it comes to that. The documentary goes into the world of these men. At its centre is Chris Nilan, who won a Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens and fought countless times over his career. After he retired, his life went somewhere else entirely. Alex Gibney's documentary neither sanctifies the fighting nor simply condemns it. The point is this: the players pay for the violence a sport sells as entertainment. Painkiller addiction, the damage repeated blows leave in the brain, and the emptiness after retirement are all spoken about plainly in the film. Former players tell their own stories.