Defoe
Defoe
Defoe: As an Arsenal fan, I honestly feel like a traitor just sitting down to watch this documentary. I do however enjoy watching a god documentary including those aired on football. See, I have also enjoyed some of the best angle documentaries from 89 to ‘invincible’ to rocy and wrighty: from brockley to the big time – I have watched and is in love with all of them.
It is a good thing because there are tons and tons of documentaries about the top stars of the game – Messi, Ronaldo, Maradona, Gazza and all. So it is a good thing that the movie centered on – forgive me if I’m quite blunt – a far less ‘big time’ player.
That might sound as a bit cruel to Jermaine Defoe who has so many years in the Premier League and represented England in a World Cup. He defies the category of a normal cover as a feature icon of the sport. And the film does explore quite a lot of the playing aspect of his working life.
Right from the youth when he used to play with the neighborhood club which had a few future premier league players, till almost his last stint with Sunderland – there is a brief mention of his win in Scottish Premier League when credits roll. The only downside of this title however is that due to its legnth nothing more than 90 minutes which is quite an average duration for a film, it does hide a lot more tales and a few more parts of his life from the audience’s attention.
For example: His switch to West Ham as a teenager which was anyway a bad decision, The dead of his cousin, His time with Portsmouth and finally the season removing Ville they or many parts of their career – it feels like I never heard of Defoe’s favoured oppositions / matches / goals / friends / etc. Still, I get it, it’s not that sort of documentary – the ideas could have been enhanced into it more nonetheless!
It would seem that the important things were left out intentionally such as discussing the most sensitive issues about the Jackson’s or the even the changes of some key aspects of the Deroes scoring drought periods where the invasiveness of such suggestions is least during a period of preparation for a confrontation – the most conspicuous being the run up to the world cup of 2006.
But that’s a small issue here because the fact is that what questions that have been included in the film are for fun. Defoe was fortunate in his career. He has played with several clubs at varying lengths and enjoyed the respect from the supporters in almost all of them, scoring goals all the time. Being a part and playing alongside some of the better players, in fact some of the best players in the history of English football and yet he himself manages to be humble through it all.
It was not just the matches that offered something interesting. He told me about his father and his painful loss, the death of his step-brother and cousin, all within a short period of time. There are also these telling details about the media and its acute thirst to bring down successful English footballers to reality; of how that in turn changes the mental state of, say, the few brave men who agreed to be interviewed about those issues (the vast majority of football players, as the interviewed few said, are used to taking it in and carrying on). It was something I would have appreciated any such facts and any cases of racism which I am sure Defoe has come across during his career, but these are not commented on at all.
The final section of the movie centers around the events that took place while Defoe was in Sunderland, and his friendship with a dying child, Bradley Lowery, age 6. This is lovely to watch as he attends to Bradley and his family. This is without a doubt one of the most heart-wrenching parts in the film documentary but a very important one too.
I must admit that I was worried about how well viewers would warm up to or indetify with Defoe when he gave them a tour of his new house with a cinema room built in it (though he cannot swim) and other amenities among which include a swimming pool and a gym but by the end credits I have to admit (They do show something about his grand mother’s place when he was a young child in the mention minutes) you will have however got all the facts and details concerning Jermaine Defoe the person.
This is a happy film because it depicts great goal scorers of the English Premier League, who doesn’t enjoy watching goals? But it is not limited to that; this documentary still presents the highs and, more importantly in Defoe’s words, the lows as well in a football player’s life. For that reason, every football fan needs to load this film and have a look at it.
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- Genre: Sport
- Country: United States
- Director: James Ross
- Cast: Jermain Defoe, Sandra Defoe, Bertie Knight
