Will Smith stars as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born forensic pathologist who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of deceased NFL players and found himself up against the institutional power of the league when he tried to publicize his findings. Peter Landesman directs this based-on-a-true-story drama as a fairly conventional issue movie, but Smith's understated, accented performance — a deliberate departure from his usual movie-star register — earned strong notices even as the film itself was seen as safely middlebrow. Its real-world subject matter helped accelerate broader public reckoning with football's long-term health risks.