The  ANNOTICO Report

"This narrowly focused, devotional film details how a rag-tag assemblage of
Sunday soccer players defied all odds in achieving an American dream on the
International Scene."

On June 19, 1950, a ragtag group of American soccer players who went up
against the best soccer team in the world, England, and beat them in the
opening round of the World Cup, soccer’s quadrennial World Series.

The story is even more amazing because the team was picked only shortly
before the World Cup was to begin in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This film
tells the story of how the players were picked by Bill Jeffrey, the ten
days they had to try to become a team, and then the trip to Rio and,
finally, the game itself against England and its star, Stan Mortenson,
considered the best player in the world at the time.

Although most of the players were recruited from in and around St. Louis,
then the center of soccer interest in the United States, Walter Bahr, a
halfback from Philadelphia emerged as the putative coach and leader of the
team, even though he’s challenged by loudmouth partyboy “Pee Wee” Wallace.
Bahr was astute enough to realize that the St. Louisians looked to
goalkeeper Frank Borghi as their emotional leader, so he enlisted Borghi as
sort of a co-leader. Bahr induced Borghi to accompany him to recruit Joe
Gaetjens, a Haitian-born kitchen worker, an inspirational player Bahr was
convinced would make the team competitive (and who scored the only goal in
the game). Jean-Louis adds spirit and lightness to the film with a
captivating performance.

Shot on a meager budget in 49 days, director David Anspaugh and
screenwriter Angelo Pizzo (who collaborated in 1986 on “Hoosiers,” the best
basketball movie I’ve seen, and 1993’s “Rudy”).

The sequences of the actual games are extraordinarily realistic,
reminiscent of last year’s “Miracle,” which is the best sports movie I’ve
ever seen. It’s virtually impossible to determine that what we are watching
are staged scenes in a movie and not clips from actual competition. As in
“Miracle,” many of the actors are real soccer players, which enhances the
realism without resorting to doubles.
[http://www.tonymedley.com/2005/
The_Game_of_Their_Lives.htm]

Leaving behind their wives, girlfriends and families for New York, Frank
Borghi, Harry Keough, Gino Pariani, Frank 'Pee Wee' Wallace and Charles
"Gloves" Colombo joined Philadelphian Walter Bahr, Haitian-born New Yorker
Joe Gatjeans and additional East Coasters for a short 10-day training
period in which these young men from different races, religions and
backgrounds were forced to see past one another's differences and become a
full-fledged team.

With the odds considerably against them both abroad and at home, the U.S.
team arrived in Rio with little training and even less fanfare. After a
crushing defeat by Spain in the World Cup opener, the Americans expected
more of the same when they arrived to play England's highest-ranked team,
which indicated such all-time soccer legends as Stan Mortensen and Billy
Wright, on June 19, 1950.

But then something remarkable happened: the Brazilian fans' lack of support
for England, the pre-tournament favorite, buoyed the Americans on and this
team of underdog athletes, who never knew real victory and true glory in
all their humble lives, clung to their patriotism and their love of a
sport, and scored a victory that did more than just provide an upset
defeat--it opened the door for soccer in the United States. The American
World Cup of 1950 would soon quietly return to their families and jobs,
treasuring this historic victory, which would forever be known to them as
The Game of Their Lives.[
http://www.hollywood.com/movies/
detail/movie/1720358#more]

Most pleased will be proud St. Louisans: The city gets name-dropped
approximately once a minute, as most of the 1950 U.S.A. World Cup team
consisted of Italian-Americans from the St. Louis neighborhood known as The
Hill. (That none of the major actors is Italian or from St. Louis is a very
unfortunate -:(

East Bay Express
By Luke Y. Thompson
April 20,2005

"The Game of Their Lives" is the second movie in the past three years with
that title, and also the second about a major soccer upset during the World
Cup. The first was a documentary about the North Korean team of 1966; while
it was fascinating, it has yet to find a distributor in the U.S., possibly
because the notion of depicting patriotic North Koreans as heroes is not
exactly in vogue right now. The new "Game of Their Lives" focuses on
Americans and opens this week; among those who realize that there's more
than one game called "football" in the world, it should be a major
crowd-pleaser.

Most pleased will be proud St. Louisans: The city gets name-dropped
approximately once a minute, as most of the 1950 U.S.A. World Cup team
consisted of Italian-Americans from the St. Louis neighborhood known as The
Hill. (That none of the major actors is Italian or from St. Louis is a
minor detail -- it's impressive enough that the movie was actually shot in
St. Louis and Brazil, rather than some Canadian soundstage.) Their story
begins, unnecessarily, in the present day, with hilariously named reporter
Dent McSkimming (Patrick Stewart) recalling the great triumph he witnessed,
though he turns out to have been a peripheral character who could not
possibly have seen all the events he's about to relate.

The erstwhile Captain Picard's attempt at an American accent is a more
daunting challenge than the one faced by the U.S. team (Robert Duvall's
Scottish accent in the U.K. soccer flick A Shot at Glory easily trumps
Stewart's similar transatlantic effort), but it is amusing. McSkimming
recalls the days when he was younger, and played by another actor, Terry
McKinney, who looks nothing like Stewart but is just slightly less bald.
(He's also older-looking than he should be -- at the film's end, we see the
surviving players in the present day, and all look much older than Stewart,
yet in the past, McKinney appears closer to middle age than they do.)

For the working-class joes of The Hill, there are a few obstacles to
conquer before making the team. Frank Borghi (Gerard Butler, unrecognizable
from his star turn in The Phantom of the Opera) has to stand up to his
mother's desire to enroll him in embalming school (the real Borghi has
since returned to the funeral business, where he has served for over 25
years now). Gino Pariani (Louis Mandylor) initially backs out because he's
scheduled to get married during the cup matches, but his family-to-be turns
out to be very understanding. And when the elitist athletes already signed
to the U.S. team -- among them Walter Bahr (Wes Bentley) -- use big words
like "Neanderthal," well, you know the simple men are gonna have to learn
them thar college boys a thing or two.

There's also the specter of racism, which almost prevents the multitalented
Haitian Joe Gaetjens (Jimmy Jean-Louis) from joining the team. But viewed
from the perspective of 21st-century filmmakers, the issue turns out to be
not his skin color, but his pagan religious beliefs, about which he has an
in-depth, awareness-raising discussion during a turbulent plane ride. The
only ethnic slurs uttered in the movie are "dago" and "kraut" -- hard to
believe that the n-word never came up. Rather, the feeling one gets is that
those who were freaked out by Gaetjens simply thought he was weird for
wearing sacred beads and doing cartwheels.

Louis Mandylor's brother Costas plays teammate Charlie "Gloves" Columbo,
which is a little weird -- they share a strong resemblance, yet are playing
characters who are not related. To the casual viewer who isn't aware of the
real players, this does create some confusion in keeping everybody
straight.

There's nothing unpredictable at all about "The Game of Their Lives",
especially since the match in question against England is firmly on the
record, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most sports movies -- even
those based on fictitious athletes -- have a predictable ending anyway. The
writer-director combo of Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh know this well,
having already made Hoosiers and Rudy together. The notes are expertly hit,
and because it's an international story, they also tug at the patriotic
heartstrings.

Best of all, the movie doesn't fall into the trap that other recent soccer
movies have: Both Mean Machine and Bend It Like Beckham used all kinds of
choppy editing tricks to "speed up" all the in-game footage, possibly to
camouflage the actors' relative inability. Perhaps because it's a period
film, no such postmodern trickery is used here -- excitement is generated
strictly by the actual choreography and the enthusiastic commentary of a
British announcer (Tim Vickery).

 The Game of Their Lives
Opens Friday. Rated PG
Film Director: David Anspaugh
Starring: Gerard Butler, Wes Bentley, Patrick Stewart, and Jimmy Jean-Louis
Written By: Angelo Pizzo, based on the book by Geoffrey Douglas

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/
issues/2005-04-20/film/movies4.html