BBC import Footballer’s Wives, minus the wives and further recalibrated to PG-style melodrama. (Yes, this means there is
an explosive argument in which one character chafes at parental counsel
by belting out that he wants his “own life.”) If soccer doesn’t have
quite the stranglehold in the United States that it does around the
rest of the world, it won’t matter for the core audience of this
attractively shot underdog’s tale.
The story centers on a
hard-working illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, Santiago Munez
(Kuno Becker). Having snuck across the border with his family when he
was but a child, Santiago finds his opportunities severely limited. He
works as a dishwasher and does landscaping with his father, Hernan
(Tony Plana), but his real passion is soccer, which he plays with a
local club team. One afternoon, former British player turned freelance
scout Glen Foy (Stephen Dillane) witnesses Santiago’s tremendous innate
talent and pitches him on trying out for Newcastle United. Against the
edict of his practical father, Santiago heads to England, courtesy of
clandestine travel arrangements booked by his loving grandmother.
There, Santiago hooks up with Foy and promptly botches his first
audition, on a muddy pitch in the driving rain — much different
conditions than he’s used to in L.A.
Foy prevails upon reluctant Coach Erik Dornhelm (Marcel Iures),
however, to give Santiago another shot, and Santiago eventually makes
the practice squad. While the Newcastle A-team and its party-happy new
star, Gavin Harris (Alessandro Nivola, deploying sly, dark charm),
makes a late-season push to try to salvage a playoff birth, Santiago
must negotiate standoffish teammates, a coach trying to teach him the
value of a pass and his own secret struggle with asthma, all while
wooing nurse Roz Harmison (Anna Friel).
Impressively staged outdoor action mixes in energetic club tracks
from Kasabian, The Perceptionists, Unkle, Supercharger and deejay Paul
Oakenfold. One of the interesting things about the movie is that casual
viewers have less of a relationship with the sport of soccer through
predetermined television angles than baseball or (American) football,
which somewhat feeds the match excitement. Unfortunately, though,
there’s a lot of character-rooted drama, and it’s here that director
Danny Cannon — who’s made good coinage on all the various iterations of
CSI — is less successful. Granted, he’s saddled with a cobbled
together script that too often doubles back to validate twice over
Santiago’s choices; one sequence, in which he explains to Coach
Dornhelm why he’s chosen to remain with his teammates in the face of
grave family circumstances, is immediately and pointlessly followed by
a phone conversation with his grandmother in which she declares,
“You’re right, it’s God’s will.” Worse still is a score by Graeme
Revell that swells disagreeably during these melodramatic moments,
feeding the movie’s overly demonstrative style.
Savvy casting helps Goal! trump its formula. Iures strikes just the right balance between taskmaster and mentor, and Becker (Imagining Argentina, Mexican television’s popular Soñadoras),
if honestly a bit one-note, has a certain magnetic charm to match his
perfectly boyish good looks. Brief cameos by David Beckham, Sven-Göran
Eriksson, Raul Gonzalez Blanco and other soccer stars, but most
importantly the sanctioning of governing body FIFA, lends the movie a
rooted authenticity that’s missing in many Hollywood sports films. If
underdog tales are your screen soft spot, you’ll likely be hollering Goal! (Touchstone, PG, 117 mins.)