The ANNOTICO Report
"The Game of Their Lives" retells the 55-year-old
story of how the
American men's soccer team scored a major upset against
England in the
first round of the World Cup in 1950.
Team USA was a 500-to-1 underdog!!!
A group of first-generation Italian-Americans from St.
Louis is recruited
to play with a band of East Coast preppies. The culture
clashing goes on
for a few scenes but it doesn't take long for everybody
to lay off the
ethnic slurs and play as a team.
'The Game of Their Lives' depicts unlikely 1950 upset
The Boston Globe
By Wesley Morris
Fri, June. 03, 2005
It's easy to see how indifferent this country is toward
soccer when you
look at the movies we have - or haven't - made about
it. Those that do
exist tend to be rambunctious kiddie flicks front-loaded
with funnymen and
crotch kicks.
It says everything about American movies' interest in
the game when "Fever
Pitch," Nick Hornby's soccer-fan memoir, is made over
as the story of a
stark-raving Red Sox nut.
The only major depiction that comes to mind is the 13-year-old
Rodney
Dangerfield-Jackee Harry vehicle "Ladybugs," although
this summer there is
"Kicking and Screaming," but that just looks like coach
Will Ferrell
out-bratting a bunch of 10-year-old boys.
In the meantime, "The Game of Their Lives," a perfectly
reverent feel-good
portrait, is sneaking into the Regal Warrington today.
The film retells the
55-year-old story of how the American men's soccer team
scored a major
upset against England in the first round of the World
Cup. The film does so
with as little fuss as possible without being completely
indolent. But
given that it's merely another sports-triumph flick (Team
USA was a
500-to-1 underdog), the story could pretty much tell
itself.
The filmmakers are none other than director David Anspaugh
and screenwriter
Angelo Pizzo, who made "Hoosiers," that classic high
school basketball
odds-beater, and the college football weepie "Rudy,"
an ESPN classic. Here
they're working with considerably lower dramatic stakes.
A group of first-generation Italian-Americans from St.
Louis is recruited
to play with a band of East Coast preppies. The culture
clashing goes on
for a few scenes but it doesn't take long for everybody
to lay off the
ethnic slurs and play as a team. The guys even embrace
the Haitian-born New
Yorker Joe Gatjeans (Jimmy Jean-Louis) and his voodoo.
The cast is hard-working. "Phantom of the Opera" star
Gerard Butler plays
goalie Frank Borghi, and he's much more appealing now
that you can see his
entire face. Wes Bentley, the pot dealer in "American
Beauty," resurfaces
as team captain Walter Bahr. The grunge singer-turned-Mr.
Gwen Stefani,
Gavin Rossdale, plays the cocky English star Stanley
Mortensen, who seems
to have been the David Beckham of his day.
The big news, aside from the appearance of "Home Improvement"
son Zachery
Ty Bryan, is the teaming up of the Mandylor brothers,
Costas of Skinemax
fame and Louis, star of the martial-art flicks that turn
up on Cinemax's
Action Max channel. They play hotheaded Charley "Gloves"
Columbo and
softhearted Gino Pariani, respectively.
The 1950 World Cup was the first after World War II, and
the U.S. team was
heading down to Brazil as a public relations move and
an investment in the
American future of soccer. They weren't supposed to beat
anybody, let alone
the country that invented the sport. (The team eventually
lost to Chile.)
It's that objective that gives "The Game of Their Lives"
its wistfulness.
The movie opens in the stands at a D.C. United match,
where the indelibly
named Dent McSkimming (Patrick Stewart), the reporter
who covered the Cup
that year, rejoices in how the game's popularity has
grown over half a
century. Indeed it has! Warming up on the field are Landon
Donovan and
Freddy Adu.
Stewart narrates the movie and does the commentating during
the matches,
which are pretty exciting. What the cast members lack
in sharpened skill
they more than make up for in raw gusto and athletic
scrappiness (most of
the actors have logged a lot of soccer in their pasts).
These guys give a
sport that is virtually nameless in the movies a good
name in this one.