The Beautiful Game
The Beautiful Game
The Beautiful Game: Bill Nighy, Micheal Ward, Valeria Golino, Susan Wokoma, Tom Vaughan Lawlor, Cristina Rodlo, Kit Young, Sian Reese-Williams, Callum Scott Howells, Sheyi Cole, Jessye Romeo, Aoi Okuyama, Layo-Chrisina Akinlude, Robin Nazari: If the numbers of the former stars does not move anybody to action, then those of new stars must do the trick.
Some champions of the resolution of homelessness engage themselves in staging in every year competition for the Homeless men the so-called soccer tournament named The Homeless World Cup.
In 2001 there was such a business, which has now come into vogue, a non-profit organization called The Homeless World Cup whose purpose was to bring good around on the unfortunate people – soccer or so it seems. The Beautiful Game directed by Thea Sharrock is a worst case scenario cliche of a movie but manages to focus a positive light on the plight of these people who are really worthy of cheers.
A large portion of it is based on true events (screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce) and the storyline revolves around the English team codenamed The Misfits who suck at playing but have Mal who is a retired football scout and has come to the team to stop the mess.
In every underdog sports scenario, there is some twist, quite a huge jolt in it relative to this film, it embraces more observation everybody is looking to be an underdog even Mal wants to take part an underdog in this case for once.
Moving to the next contest scheduled to take place in Rome, he is also in high spirit on getting striker Vinnie (how brilliantly Michael Ward performs as an affected husband who has lost pride, personal failure, and self worth, oh great, I don’t know how to describe this – powerful acting) who was a homeless husband and father, a down and out man who’s…”béat the children” whenever he is off shift (as a cashier), or making “tomorrow I will take you out to eat” promises to his partner and daughter.
He is not really convinced about this and neither is he interested in putting up any collective spirit to achieving this end. And neither does he think of this as a second chance for anything, and anything like that this is a second chance to perform, no no, the objective is not to perform, the point is to get away from the ever biting real life and play the sport he enjoys.
Therefore, it is expected that Vinny will discover that there is more to this game than winning and there are rules governing teamwork. What was a pleasant surprise is that the script smartly incorporates in a few more sub plots not only for the players in his team but other countries that join the Homeless World Cup tournaments.
Of course, there are some stereotypical characters, such as a woman who helps people coming off heroin or children who had such destitute childhoods, that they don’t have any hopes of making a career, with the screenplay even examining how this would change who they are instead of making them the butt of jokes as the abusive people, which they certainly seem to be.
The Beautiful Game is a delightful surprise how the film does have its funny bits. In fact, towards the end, there is a young woman who is dressed rather skimpily for the title of the documentary. Still, what prevails is that towards the latter half, more serious matters take center stage, though a substantial banter still exists.
Turning to the Other, there are countries such as South Africa with the help of Sister Protasia (Susan Wokoma) and her late Roman team trying to evacuate the area, the best player in the tournament, Rosita, (Cristina Rodlo) anchored in the USA, the nasty Italy herself, all of them have some Playing for England, Aldar (Robin Nazari) is a Kurdish Syrian, a refugee from his family and home which is in ruins because of bombs, battling his own indecision whether to play against a war impacted player. For some comic relief, a blooming romance between the two sports teams’ players is an unexpected turn of events.
All these combine to produce a movie that has its fair share of character development in a rather predictable storyline. This is what is enough to also cover up some of the less chic soccer sequences.
However, while The Beautiful Game is ‘fun’ in that it offers great song choices (Seven Nation Army will hound you throughout sporting tasks, which probably is a good idea), it mostly does not rely on thrilling gameplay, except for thrilling penalty kicks.
When it comes time to show the details of Vinny’s backstory, which is discussed with much melodrama, even that works thanks to the talents of Michael Ward and Bill Nighy who manage to add more of an emotional punch to it.
Perhaps, more than others, it is a gratifying reminder to certain people, who may have lost track, who do not have homes and who deserve another chance, even less as this World Cup does and above all benefits them and us.
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- Genre: Drama, Sport
- Country: United States
- Director: Thea Sharrock
- Cast: Micheal Ward, Beckett Handley, Tahvae Hunte
