 GOAL!
Review by Sean O'Conor
GOAL! is the bravest and most expensive attempt yet to bring the
world's number one game to the big screen.
 The
story like the game itself is simple enough to appeal to everyone:
A well-worn rags to riches tale of having a dream and overcoming
all the obstacles along the way to fulfilling it.
Young Santiago Munez, played by good-looking if a little wooden
Kuno Becker, escapes illegally to the US with his Mexican family
with the dream of footballing glory in his head.
In achieving his dream of becoming a football star overseas (an
MLS career is not an option; indeed a sparsely-attended game in
a poor stadium is labeled as ‘MLS'!) our hero must overcome
a series of trials along the way: A lack of the right equipment,
poverty, his immigrant father's cultural objections (shades of Bend
It Like Beckham), immigration officials, jealous or dangerous
teammates and disinterested coaches, a prowling football agent,
tabloid newspapers, asthma and the English weather.
 Come
the inevitable reaching of his goal by the film's conclusion
you feel that being shot several times in the head would have been
just another hurdle for superhero Santiago, a Latino Roy of the
Rovers for our age.
 Unfortunately
the obstacles in the way of the film's quest for credibility
are too tall to be surmounted. In the first place it is endorsed
by FIFA and part-funded by Adidas, a cue for a deluge of product
placement, and the film is clearly intended for an international
market that includes Mexico, where the story begins, America where
it continues, England where it concludes and the countries represented
by the twelve languages on the official
website.
Future installments of the trilogy are to include a move to Real
Madrid and then an assault on the World Cup for either Mexico or
the USA (don't laugh). This is fine in theory but a film which
tries to be all things to all cultures inevitably feels a bit diluted
in its message, even in this age of multinational football.
 Then
there is the target audience. This is a 12A certificate. These future
customers of Adidas and FIFA do not want to be turned off the Beautiful
Game by a truthful tale of perverted morality and the corrupting
nature of obscene sums of money.
There are hints of the hell as memorably depicted by Tony Adams
in ‘Addicted', Paul Gascoigne in ‘Gazza'
and Tony Cascarino in ‘Full Time', but the filmmakers
felt inevitably constrained by the project's raison d'etre.
Many will say GOAL! was almost cursed before it began purely because
it is a football film and as we all know football and film are uncomfortable
bedfellows.
 The
main reason for this is that actual play cannot easily be replicated
by actors and the sport itself throws up such real drama that a
fictionalized version has a serious credibility problem. To compensate,
filmmakers have tried in the past to make the human stories around
the game of greater interest, as Wim Wenders did in ‘The Goalkeeper's
Fear of the Penalty Kick', or Eran Riklis did in ‘Cup
Final'.
It has not been through want of trying but due to these apparently
insurmountable hurdles the sport has always struggled to translate
to cinema. I recall watching the filming of a TV football drama
during the half time interval of a game I was attending and the
actors' increasingly hilariously woeful attempts to film a
scoring move successfully.
To the credit of the makers of ‘GOAL!' therefore,
they have employed the latest technology to combat the first objection.
They fairly seamlessly blend footage of the real actors with that
of real teams so as to give the impression they are playing in the
same game.
 For
football nit-pickers who know say that Patrick Kluivert has already
left Tyneside this may not gel but for most of us it works rather
well. However, the second hurdle of making fictionalized soccer
as exciting as the real thing is something they do not succeed at.
 On
the plus side the actors are very good. Sean Pertwee is the deliciously
sleazy agent Barry Rankin, Stephen Dilane is excellent as the decent
and honest scout Glen Foy who discovers Santiago whilst Italian-American
Alessandro Nivola steals the show as the playboy star Gavin Harris,
with the best cockney accent ever spoken by an American actor incidentally.
And whilst it cannot be said to be realistic, at least there are
nods to the contemporary reality of the game when showing the money-grabbing
football agent with no love for the sport itself, the sleazy hangers-on
and the star player's booze and bird-filled nights out.
Santiago's perseverance through adversity is also credible,
particularly for all of us who can relate to the anguish of playing
badly in trials or being unfairly ignored by coaches.
 Football
fanatics will also enjoy the cameo interludes of David Beckham,
Zinedine Zidane and Alan Shearer although I did chuckle when the
far from hip Sven-Goran Eriksson pops up in a trendy nightspot,
given the tabloid tales of the England coach's extra-curricular
activities.
My eyebrows were also somewhat raised at seeing Newcastle United
portrayed as one of the world's top teams instead of recent
Premiership also-rans, although then I remembered who makes their
kit.
As the opening segment of a trilogy I certainly cannot say I am
on the edge of my seat desperate for the sequels to arrive as predictable
this saga certainly is with a capital P. But clumsy it is not. The
filmmakers have made a real effort here, around $100 million to
be precise and the ensemble, whilst somewhat bearing the cartoonish
hallmarks of its CSI director Danny Cannon, nevertheless is not
unmoving and certainly worth a look.
Movie
clip excerpts from the film GOAL! |
In the mud. |
Live match. |
On the story. |
Playing Shearer. |
Trial for NUFC. |
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