Review: Goal!
Unlike American Football, the UK Football scene has relatively few movies about The Beautiful Game, not to say they don’t exist but usually they’re about the hooligans (Football Factory and Green Street) or the Managers (Damned United and Mike Bassett). It’s that fact why Goal has stood out for fans, being one of the few football films to actually involve football, as well as being a snapshot of the mid-2000s period where a lot of legendary players were at their peak.
Being completely uninterested in sports in general I never bothered with Goal!, but I figured I’d give it a shot for no other real reason than curiosity, I went in expecting something laughably inept and melodramatic, figuring it make for an easy review.
But to the film’s credit, it’s not actually that bad.
The film follows Santiago Munez, a Mexican immigrant working with his father in Los Angeles as a gardener but with dreams of playing football for a professional team, he has skills but his crappy homelife, working class background and overbearing father is keeping him back. By chance, Santiago is spotted by Glen Foy, a former player for Newcastle United who pulls some strings to allow Santiago a trial period with his old squad. Against his father’s wishes, Santiago leaves for England with no clue about what to expect when he’s there.
As it turns out, England is rough, and Santiago struggles with the shitty weather and shitty teammates as all of them fight out for a spot on the reserve team, but Glen convinces Newcastle Manager Erik Dornhelm to allow Santiago a month to acclimatise himself and properly showcase his talents. As Santiago finds himself slowly building up the ranks he finds friendship with Newcastle latest signing, playboy Gavin Harris and strike up a romance with club nurse Roz Harmison, but with his own misgivings and a bad case of asthma hidden from his teammates, it’s still not an easy road for Santiago to follow.
Full disclosure, the story is fairly standard but that doesn’t necessarily mean bad, once you break it down it’s a typical rags-to-riches storyline complete with the 2nd act tragedy that the main character has to work through. But I’ll give the story credit, not only did it have a couple moments that surprised me with how they turned out – no spoilers but the 2nd act tragedy happened before the film could resort to a cheesy moment and I appreciate them for allowing that – but I also never got the feeling that it was just going through the motions, it’s standard fare yes but there’s a conscious effort to make its own brand of standard fare. This is most notable in the fact that Santiago isn’t this superstar, football prodigy, he does have issues playing and even towards the end of the film he’s still working through them, it’s small additions but it’s enough to make the story feel tailored made to this film rather than being a by-the-numbers sort.
Likewise I was also surprised by the acting in the film, it’s not awards worthy but considering I was expecting overdramatic and wooden it’s actually a lot better than I gave it credit for. There were a few low points, Anna Friel’s thankless role as Roz is essentially sidelined to little more than love interest, I almost complained about the typical 2nd act break-up due to a misunderstanding but they don’t even break-up and it’s quickly forgotten about. And the film commits the cardinal sin of wasting Stephen Graham, that might be a personal one but I like the guy and having him with pretty much no speaking lines feels wasteful.
Better roles included the manager Erik who, while a bit too business focussed at times, did see potential in Santiago and pushed him to be better, Glen Foy played by Stannis Baratheon with hair had a big role at the start as the only friend Santiago had and gave him a life-raft in the storm of English football, he sort of disappeared about half-way through which I can understand since there wasn’t really any place to put him but you do feel his absence. As well as Santiago’s father Hernan a stern man trying to provide for his chidren after his wife walked out on them, believing that Santiago’s dreams should stay just that because he’s had to work hard for everything in his life, like Glen you do notice when Hernan is missing but considering his role in the story it would be hard to include him anymore than they did.
The most surprising character for me personally was that of Gavin Harris played by the idiot assistant from Jurassic Park 3. Initially it seemed like Harris was being built up as this arrogant prick who would be a rival for Santiago on the pitch, but he turned out to be an arrogant prick who became his friend instead. There was a few moments of Gavin’s character where I thought he might have been more interesting to follow than Santiago, he’s an expensive player brought in to help a struggling Newcastle win back points but despite being good he’s not as great as his price-tag would have you believe so he half-asses it, self-destructing with booze and sex and shitty friend who sell him out. Maybe it’s just my love of flawed characters or maybe it was the fact that I was expecting to hate his guts but Gavin won me over before the end.
And then we have Santiago himself played by Kuno Becker, and I’ll say it outright, I liked him quite a bit. There’s definitely a charm to Santiago, be it his big dreams that we can all relate to, his drive to better himself or just that he’s so damn likeable, it’s difficult to ignore that Santiago just has something that grabs your attention. More than that though, the film never makes the mistake of making Santiago too big for his boots, he’s good but he’s not perfect and that adds to his relatability, he hides his asthma because he’s scared it’ll ruin his chances with the team, he forgets to pass the ball which I think most people who play football recreationally can attest to doing themselves and he’s friendly to a fault, sometimes putting himself in the shit to protect his friends. All of this works together to make Santiago a solid character to carry the film, Becker’s own talents definitely help with him managing to give some of the more emotional moments the proper hit they need to be effective and I’m interested to see where he goes in the sequel.
Though hopefully he learns how to properly pronounce Fulham going forward.
Director Danny Cannon, who was also behind the original Judge Dredd and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, delivers a decent but uninspired job. That’s perhaps unfair but I do get the feeling he was just a name to put on the credits since there’s not a lot of... let’s say flair to the film.
I am actually struggling to think of how to put this down into words because there’s not a lot to say, the direction isn’t good, far from it, but it’s not bad either, everything works as it needs to including a cliché orange filter for Los Angeles and a blue filter for England in the camera work but it’s not interesting. In hindsight that’s probably the film’s biggest failing, there’s not a great amount of energy in the actual football games, in fact some of it feels half-assed at times such as when Erik sees Santiago scoring goals from five feet away without a keeper, I can’t even kick the ball properly and I can do that. My flatmate who knows more about football than me did say that some of the footwork was impressive but even he pointed out some sillier moments that were impossible to pull off without CGI. The best way to describe what Cannon does is ‘inoffensive’, he films what he needs to, slow-motion when big drama moments happen, wild movements for the club scenes, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before and clearly not meant to be the focus of the film as a whole.
Having now seen Goal! I still don’t care that much about the game but I can appreciate what fans see in this film, even with Cannon’s direction being ho-hum the story is strong enough and the acting decent enough with Harris and Santiago making a strong pairing that I wish had more focus together that the film as a whole is actually pretty good even to someone like me. Might have I enjoyed it more with context? Probably but from an outsider perspective, I dug what it gave me.
6/10