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Hollywood fails to score

Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone in Escape to Victory
  • Posted at 3:21pm
  • 02 May 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

Let's not beat around the bush: films about football just don’t work, do they? Boxing translates brilliantly to the screen. Athletics gave us Chariots of Fire. But think of the beautiful game and you’ll only come up with ugly films.

It’s saying something when films about football supporters (Fever Pitch, Purely Belter) – or even hooligans (The Firm – not the Tom Cruise one, the Gary Oldman one – and The Football Factory) – are more dramatic than those about what happens on the pitch.

Although it’s now become something of a guilty pleasure, 1981’s Escape to Victory remains the nadir of the genre. Real footballers like Bobby Moore and Pelé play alongside Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone, in this hammy story of a Second World War PoW camp escape, built around an exhibition football match. The players can’t act, the actors can’t play – it’s the worst of both worlds.

For me, football movies fail because the needs of the drama dictate the final score. Even a decent film like Bend It like Beckham is hobbled by the predictability of the climactic shoot-out. Documentaries like Manchester United: beyond the Promised Land are on safer ground – football is exciting enough without the imposition of these artificial storylines.

With Euro 2008 now just a truncated series of Pushing Daisies away, we might revisit England’s defeat in the 2006 World Cup, and give it a Hollywood ending. As the second half begins, it’s 0-0. Tearful captain David Beckham is substituted after ankle problems. The final whistle goes: it’s penalties. Lampard’s is saved; Hargreaves scores; Gerrard’s is kept out. Portugal only need one more to secure a place in the semis. The crowd can hardly bear to look.

But what’s this? Instead of Jamie Carragher, David Beckham hobbles bravely onto the pitch to take the decider. Fighting back the pain, he runs up and nearly trips. In agonising slow motion, he recovers and knocks it into the back of the net. The stadium erupts, just as it did in Escape to Victory.

I know. Unbelievable, isn’t it? That’s why they think the football movie is all over. It is now.

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