Film Reviews

Goal!

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Alessandro Nivola
• Details: UK/US 120mins (PG)

In Goal! Santiago (Becker) from the LA barrio gets a begrudging trial with Newcastle United and, against all the odds, a first team place inside a few months. He scores and gets the club a place in the Champions League. Two sequels to follow. But, but...
Here's the problem: people watch football games to see who will win, but football games in films have predetermined winners and losers because the story demands it. So everything that happens on the field of play is false. The collective geniuses of cinema have yet to make a football game believable in a big screen story. Yet the games should be turning points in the drama. Part of the problem is that in real life we watch most team sports on screen in long shot. Close ups or cut away shots are unusual during the run of play. And so close ups and cutaways during matches in movies alert us to discontinuous action, 'cheat' shots, and the possible use of body doubles.
Co-written by veteran UK writng team Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, who also wrote The Commitments, Goal! is very traditional 'feel-good' movie in which the hero triumphs against the adversity of his circumstances. A Mexican illegal in LA holding down two jobs, he suffers an overbearing father, a long-absent mother, and asthma. Only his Grandmother believes in him, and the Englishman Gavin Foy (Dillane) who spots him playing with a local amateur side in LA. The director should have blown the whistle at 90mins, there was no call for extra time.

Review by Ted Sheehy