The Film Review

Young Mexican footballing talent Santiago Munez has a dream that escapes the lowly ambitions of his father. His skill with the ball’s obvious for anyone to see and so it is that Santiago (Kuno Becker) catches the eye of ex Newcastle scout and former player Glen Foy (Stephen Dillane.) Against his father’s wishes Munez hitches a ride to England where he’s promised a trial with Newcastle. It’s there that a love interest with Roz Harmison (Anna Friel,) the club’s sexy nurse, ensues. Finally after much trial and error and with the aid of bad boy eight million pound signing Gavin Harris (Alessandro Nivola) Santiago breaks into the first team making an impact with his debut appearance and naturally delivering an even better performance with his first start at the club and final game of the season where a place in Europe for the club would be decided. It’s predictable stuff but good fun all the same.

Now that’s fair, predictable stuff but good fun all the same. Expanding on the former, one of the films biggest flaws is its predictability. Throughout you’ve got a basic idea of what’s going to happen next and more often than not, you’ll be right with your prediction. It just would’ve been nice had they taken a more original approach, straying from the same tried and tested formula that a lot of movies have taken, even the football ones. A climax where the films lead scores the winning goal for his team, usually in extra time with seconds to spare loses its charm after the sixth or seventh time we’ve seen it happen. With Goal’s early on predictability you just know this is going to be the case, in this instance and forgive me for failing to siren a spoiler warning, Santiago netting a free kick that cements the promise of European football for Newcastle come next season.

I must say though, I never held out much hope for Goal. I remember hearing about it all of course, the cameos of Zidane, Beckham and co enough to make the headlines as if that would give me reason to watch it, as if that was the answer to a football based movie that was actually good for once. It just sounded like it would be shit, to be plainly honest. Though with the sports genre you actually get the watchable flick time and time again, the football ones have always failed to deliver. There are a few cases you could make an argument for but not many. Some say that’s because the beautiful game is so difficult to replicate by film and though that’s true to an extent, whatever the case, they just aren’t much cop and Goal didn’t install me with any further confidence. In fact, I avoided the Premiere, as do I most often unless it’s a film that actually shows some real promise.

There is something about it though, something hooking. I said I avoided the premiere, well I avoided the start of it at least. I came down half way through and it caught my eye so much so that I stopped my watching, taped a later start and watched it later on that very night. You see, for all its flaws, Goal is still very much a decent movie and whether that be down to a good soundtrack (boasting the likes of Oasis and Kasabian) or its predictability I can’t say. What I will say is that it’s the first football film that’s actually grabbed at me in a ‘you should watch this’ kind of manner.

The acting was decent, Kuno Becker performing well as the lead but is overshadowed by supporting cast member Alessandro Nivola who’s excellent in his role as bad boy Gavin Harris, a character who befriends Santiago. Becker was solid and though a major star in Mexico, I didn’t remain wholly convinced. Love interest Anna Friel, chosen for being, well, rather hot was solid also but I’d agree with another reviewer who’d said she didn’t have a lot to do. Being quite the looker’s quite the consolation. The rest were also good, watchable and to an extent believable but aside from Nivola, it lacked any stand out performances, or so I felt.

If you didn’t know already then Goal’s part of a trilogy, a planned trilogy at least with both sequels due out sometime this year. Whether these will be any good or whether they’ll drag Goal on remains to be seen. Number 2 focuses on Santiago’s transfer to Real Madrid. I expect by that time he’ll be a star and will have played a season or two at Newcastle. I really don’t see how Madrid would go in for him after making two appearances for Newcastle so yeah, maybe we’ll see some more of his time at Newcastle. I expect following this new found fame, he’s likely to split up with Roz before getting back together into time to score another late winner in the champion’s league final or something. The third’s based on Santiago’s trials at the world cup which, he‘ll probably single handedly go on to win. Doesn’t sound like much cop to me, more like trying to milk it for all the money they can get. What is intriguing is that each film boasts a different director, Danny Cannon, Jaume Collet-Serra who away from music videos and commercials is only known for The House of Wax and finally, the experienced Michael Apted will be in the director’s chair for the climax.

Goal’s a good movie but as with many others, it’s not a great one. It’s let down by its predictable nature as well as a poor script which tries too hard at humour and boasts cringe worthy cheesy lines aplenty. It relies too heavily on being FIFA endorsed and having cameos of real world footballers when that doesn’t make a good movie, especially when you have David Beckham speaking a line (god forbid the talk that he’ll start a career in Hollywood.) But, it is good fun and good entertainment. It doesn’t drag on and is likely to make you smile. Its flaws prevent it from being a winner but at the end of the day, it’s watchable and enjoyable stuff that I won’t be advising you to go to extreme lengths to miss out on.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Drama, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.