Film Review: Goal

Goal is being released today. The official website is a bit wanky and takes some time so the director and cast info comes from here.

Director: Danny Cannon
Cast: Kuno Becker, Alessandro Nivola, Marcel Iures, Stephen Dillane, Anna Friel

As someone who particularly dislikes soccer, this motion picture advertising (and threatened trilogy) for the soccer World Cup reads like a nightmare: poor Mexican wetback kid gets lucky break and leaves LA to play for Newcastle United - but the acting is great, the story and characters realistic, and the cinematography in the few actual scenes of play is long on action and short on the mid-field pussy-footing that drives the sceptical to distraction.

We're rooting for the kid from the very start as we witness the drudgery of his illegal immigrant life, living in LA with his hard-arse father, doting grandmother and younger brother and his dream of international football fame in the form of a roll of banknotes tucked into his old work boot as his ticket out of deprevation. He's spotted by an ex-Newcastle talent scout and former player who gets him a trial and then his introduction to the big league begins, commercially, socially and professionally. Given the climax was an inevitable first game victory and is preceeded by beginnings of a daliance with drugs and a lifestyle like it was Miami in the 80s there is a lot of ground left to cover for the rest of the movies.

The kid works his way quickly through the training camp and after a the usual ups and downs (including a particularly weak non-issue of having asthma) forms a somewhat improbably immediate friendship with the No.1 glamour striker. He pulls a girlfriend, earns the respect of the Sven Goran Erikkson-type coach and his family back home learn of his exploits which even his father will respect in the end. It has very good pace and ends at the right point (where so many films these days are far too long) but some things just get brushed over. The most nagging is the total non-explanation of how he, as an illegal Mexican immigrant in the US, goes back to Mexico, and then gets to stay and work in the UK - the lack of paperwork was annoying - you expect an immigration officer to intervene at any moment to boot him out.

This is a surprisingly well-made flick that delivers a solid, simple story and apart from a few niggles didn't have to rely on tricky sub-plots to sustain interest - that was all down to Becker and he look set to score from a long way out.

I'd give it a 3 out of 5. A soccer fan may give it half a point more and as far as achieving what it set out to do it would be closer to 5/5.

[Syriana is also due to be on general release today - I'll post my review on that shortly.]