The Beautiful Game Review: Touching True Story Set In The Context Of The Homeless World Cup
Cast: Michael Ward, Cristina Rodlo, Bill Nighy, Valeria Golino
Director: Thea Sharrock
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
From Friday 29 March, a new sports film based on a true story, The Beautiful Game, is available on Netflix. The story focuses on the adventures of the English team at the Homeless World Cup, a world football championship with all homeless players. The objective of the tournament is to bring together people of different genders and ages, from various nations, to improve their living conditions through a universal language, football. The film is directed by Thea Sharrock and written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. The cast includes Michael Ward, Bill Nighy, Valeria Golino, Aoi Okuyama, Chris Young, and Callum Scott Howells. Exterior, day. On a suburban pitch in England, some children are playing football, each wearing the shirt of a famous footballer. And the voice that, for fun, is doing the commentary of the match calls them by the name of the players.
At a certain point, the ball leaves the field and reaches him. We understand that commenting on the match, there is a slightly grown-up boy, in fact, a man, who enters the pitch, dribbles past everyone, and puts the ball in the net. A coach is watching the game and tells him to come with him. Inspired by a true story: that of the Homeless World Cup, the world competition for national teams made up of homeless people, created to give dignity, and a second chance, to those who haven’t had it. Football, England, stories of the last and of redemption. There would be material for a Ken Loach film… if it were written and directed by Ken Loach. Instead, a script that often requires too much suspension of disbelief and a direction that favors funny and over-the-top tones make it a normal product, even a little naïve. It remains an uplifting story.
The Beautiful Game Review: The Story Plot
Let’s start from the last frames of the film, i.e. those in which it is explained to us that the story of Vinny (Michael Ward) and his companions is true. The Homeless World Cup is not a particularly well-known initiative, but it certainly has a very strong human and narrative potential. The viewer is soon led to empathize with the members of the English team, not football champions but men marked by countless difficulties, from addictions to unemployment. The characters are undoubtedly built believably, especially Vinny, who carries out a coherent – if quite predictable – narrative arc. He is recruited at the last minute by the team because he proves to be really talented, but unlike his teammates, he is not interested in making friends and is ashamed of calling himself homeless.
Vinny is a proud and cynical man, but his softer side immediately emerges in the scene that sees him playing with his six-year-old daughter. Michael Ward’s performance is also convincing. Although The Beautiful Game tackles challenging issues such as poverty and social exclusion, the ironic verve that characterizes the narrative is never lost. The misunderstandings that arise between team members often give rise to light scenes. The intervention of other characters has the same effect, for example, the competitive nun (Susie Wokoma) at the head of the South African team or the young military leader (Aoi Okuyama) of the Japanese team.
The Beautiful Game Review and Analysis
Coach Mal is Bill Nighy. And it is above all he, from the first scenes, who links The Beautiful Game to what could be a Serie A cinema, which the consummate English actor has always frequented. His unmistakable aplomb, that way of tightening his mouth, that way of always elegant but always expressive, outside the lines, makes the difference. Here Bill Nighy works a lot with his body, with his hands, with his head: he gets excited, and he waves his arms, like those coaches who, in reality, experience the matches. He believes it, and Nighy and his coach Mal believe it. He knows that, for those on the pitch, those matches are important. And it’s thanks to Nighy that, at least for a while, we believe in that film too. We believe it up to a certain point, of course. There’s Bill Nighy, there’s football, and there’s a good story. But the structure is rather television – in the sense that was understood until a few years ago – that, so to speak, of a generalist TV drama.
Add to that the fact that it was filmed in Rome, a somewhat stereotyped and postcard-like Rome and the result is a bit alienating. Even the story, a typical story of redemption, unfolds according to a somewhat abstruse script, both in terms of the rules of the tournament and the path that leads our hero to redemption. By the way, our Valeria Golino is also part of the film, very nice, amused, and probably a little in disbelief of the film she became part of. This is why The Beautiful Game is a bit of a missed opportunity. It is part of a group of rather noble films that range from The Dirty Last Goal and Escape to Victory, stories of teams born by chance, or by-election, teams formed by the last, who together find redemption. But, on the other hand, we are also close to Crazy for Football and Crazy For Football – Matti per il calcio, respectively documentary and film on an all-Italian story, that of the national football team of psychiatric patients conceived by Santo Rullo and reported several times on the screen by Volfango De Biasi.
Among the tunes of the Clash and the White Stripes, which are so perfect, Vinny will then learn that everyone can have a second chance, but also that, and this is what football teaches us, “no one saves themselves”. The Beautiful Game is not only aimed at an audience that is passionate about sports and football, but spectators with these interests are certainly further involved. The sequences dedicated to matches and training are numerous, precisely to underline the centrality of football in this story. It is not only a game capable of uniting people with different backgrounds and creating team spirit among them, but also a dream in which to take refuge for many fans. As the plot develops, the bond between Vinny and this sport is deepened: there are no big surprises, but his turbulent relationship with a difficult dream to chase is certainly described with feeling.
In general, the narrative of the film is very linear, according to the classic three-act structure, punctuated by the most exciting matches. The development appears quite predictable, pervaded by the optimistic spirit of the film. Director Thea Sharrock manages to create tension during the matches, at a fast pace, letting the anxiety of the protagonists shine through. Encouraged by coach Mal (Bill Nighy), on the pitch the members of the English team forget that they are improvised players and homeless men, but they passionately commit themselves to winning as a sign of redemption. Who are the homeless: this is what the film tells us about. The central point is the identity of the homeless.
In an attempt to change the image of homeless people that lives in the minds of most people. In contemporary society, the homeless are people. Anyone can end up on the streets, for an infinite number of reasons. Refugees, drug addicts, separated fathers, alcoholics, the unemployed, men and women rejected by their families and left to their fate on the streets. There are a thousand reasons and a thousand events that make someone end up on the street. Even those who would never have expected it. Even those who we would never have expected. The real focus of the film is this: to open our eyes to a reality that is much more widespread than it was twenty years ago. Instead of getting better, the world gets worse. Poverty grows, wars increase, families fall apart, and in an instant everything changes. I don’t know how many of you were aware of the existence of the Homeless World Cup, but those who were even before seeing The Beautiful Game know perfectly well that The Beautiful Game is not football, of course. It’s solidarity.
It is giving, doing something for those who no longer have anything. The choice to play sports is a tool for redemption, as it has been in reality for many, many athletes all over the world. In the film, as in the real tournament, the coaches of the various teams see each other every year and know each other. As well as the organizers of the event (who in the film are represented by Valeria Golino in the role of Gabriella). The game, we were saying, is solidarity. A beautiful game, the only game in the world where everyone wins. But it is also a game full of difficulties, a long list that always has the same thing in mind: asking for help. Asking for help seems easy, but it’s not. Anyone who has done it knows that it changes other people’s perception of you. Vinny knows this even better than the others, so much so that his pride in him prevents him from fully experiencing the great opportunity that has been offered to him. He seems almost annoyed, rather than grateful. In reality, he is just afraid.
Vinny doesn’t want to admit that he’s like his other teammates. Like all the other participants in the tournament. He is deeply convinced that he is different – and he is, we all are – but above all he is in a different condition from theirs. And in this he is wrong. They’ll try to make him understand, of course. Just look around to see how things are. Talking to people and discovering their stories, realizing that everyone has many problems, perhaps even more serious than ours, and our instinct for sharing, empathy, and solidarity is triggered. An instinct that the contemporary world continually tries to suffocate, succeeding only too well. England in the Homeless World Cup, like Ted Lasso’s Richmond, will also find their rituals. And his conflicts, which Vinny’s character embodies as the sense of failure that anyone who falls from a very high place could feel at any moment. The point is to experience failure, not become one.
A host of fantastic characters – from South Africa’s coach, the priceless Sister Protasia (Susan Wokoma, Cheaters) to Japan’s coach, Mika (Aoi Okuyama, Crosspoint) – will win you over as the wonders of Rome, where the film was shot, they alternate with reflections without rhetoric, only with a lot of truth, on the many variables in the field. I mean. While Seven Nation Army, the song that accompanied the Italian national team in many decisive matches with the choirs from the stands, is the soundtrack to a story that all football fans will love, fiction brings reality to the stage by pitting teams against each other who are faced in historical challenges. The Beautiful Game is not a film created and designed to focus on the story as such, on the screenplay or the staging, but it is a film that uses cinema as an element of analysis, reflection, and awareness towards a world that most people instead ignore it, using the tournament – and therefore football and its values - as the keystone.
The actors’ performances are convincing (especially that of Michael Ward and his teammates), but only to the extent that they agree to act as masks to stage metaphorical paths. The almost total concentration of the screenplay is aimed at dissecting the meaning that an event of this kind can have for the participants, each with a very complicated story behind them, using in a very effective way one of the most important characteristics of British comedy (Ted Lasso knows something about this, which however operates a discourse of mixing with the American spirit which leads to a higher result) which is to rig the drama with the noisy behavior of its people, only to then suddenly sink the blow. By opening all these discourses, Thea Sharrock’s film ends up sacrificing the integrity of its structure to try to stage total integration, definitively arriving at identification with the tournament itself, created to give a second chance to the homeless from every part of the world, regardless of races, backgrounds, and religions.
At the end of the day, the risk taken by The Beautiful Game appears to be a more than calculated risk, given that the film’s ambition is certainly not to give the public an original story or to find its resolution in an audiovisual work that had to shine for the quality of the sum of the components adopted. Rather, the film wants to put itself totally at the service of the message, which should have arrived loud and clear. This undoubtedly happens, providing the viewer with a confusing but touching story and, above all, the opportunity to learn about an extraordinarily important event for so many people. Football, England, stories of the last and of redemption. There would be material for a Ken Loach film… if it were written and directed by Ken Loach. Instead, a script that often requires too much suspension of disbelief and a direction that favors funny and over-the-top tones make it a normal product, even a little naïve. It remains an uplifting story.
The Beautiful Game Review: The Last Words
The Beautiful Game offers a touching true story set in the context of the Homeless World Cup, where the passion for sport brings together homeless people from all over the world. The film manages well to balance emotion and lightness, creating a linear – albeit predictable – narrative in which it is not difficult to empathize with the protagonists. A postcard Rome is the backdrop to the clumsy footballing exploits of the English team: however, their commitment and their desire for redemption emerge in a disruptive way, with the addition of final optimism. For starters, it’s a set of true stories about a real competition: the Homeless World Cup, an international soccer tournament that has been running for over twenty years, has helped more than a million homeless people.
The Beautiful Game Review: Touching True Story Set In The Context Of The Homeless World Cup - Filmyhype
Director: Thea Sharrock
Date Created: 2024-03-29 18:08
4
Pros
- Heartwarming: Bill Nighy delivers a winning performance as the gruff coach, Mal. The team's camaraderie and determination are truly moving.
- Social Impact: The film shines a light on the global issue of homelessness while celebrating a unique event that fosters hope and community.
Cons
- Predictability: The underdog narrative plays it safe, with some matches feeling like a sure thing.
- Uneven Development: Characters like Vinny, the talented newcomer, are well-developed, but others fall flat, especially some of the international teams.
- Tonal Juggling: Balancing social commentary with sports movie fun can be tricky. The Japanese team subplot feels a bit like a missed opportunity.
