Best moments are off field in soccer drama
In one way, you’ve already seen “The Beautiful Game.” It’s a British movie about a ragtag team of underdogs going up against more talented and capable competition. It brings together difficult personalities, doles out life lessons and goes out of its way to leave you with a warm feeling. This time the sport is soccer, but movies like this have been made about basketball, baseball, football, rugby and even curling.
Yet, “The Beautiful Game” is slightly better than most, because in addition to doing everything you might expect, it does a few things you don’t expect. It doesn’t end with a game, for example. This one really is about the characters, principally Bill Nighy as a soccer coach and Micheal Ward as a gifted player who is almost good enough for a professional career.
The film is based on a real annual event known as the Homeless World Cup, which has existed since 1999. Over the course of each year, teams made up entirely of homeless people are assembled from 68 member countries. They compete in a tournament, which changes venues every year. Last year it was held in Sacramento; in October it will be in Seoul. In the movie, it takes place in Rome.
The very fact of the Homeless World Cup, as a thing in the world, is by itself interesting. The players span a wide range of age, and — perhaps as a concession to the older players — the games are only 14 minutes long, as opposed to the standard 90 minutes of professional soccer.
Nighy plays Mal, a professional soccer scout who puts together and coaches the British team. He is particularly interested in recruiting a young man named Vinny (Ward), but Vinny insists that he’s neither homeless nor interested.
Two elements in “The Beautiful Game” are always at play, and they give the film a lift. The first is that, as played by Ward, Vinny has clearly suffered a massive blow to his ego and to his vision of himself and the world. We don’t know the precise details, but it’s clear that some deep wound of humiliation is at the foundation of his every interaction. He is fierce at protecting himself and concealing his own vulnerability.
The second important through line comes from Nighy, who is the quintessential British actor in that he never completely opens up, never lets the emotions flow, and yet is able to suggest depths of feeling with a minimum of means. We know that Mal is grieving the loss of his wife, with a sadness that hangs over him without ever quite weighing him down. We also know that he has a special insight into and sympathy for Vinny, though it takes a while for us to figure out why.
But the movie is longer than it needs to be and delves a bit too much into the lives of the various teammates. Some of the acting is overblown, and much of the movie is predictable. Still, like “Me Before You,” an earlier film from director Thea Sharrock, it gets better as it goes along, and most movies don’t.
Ultimately, it all comes down to Ward and Nighy — namely, Ward’s portrait of buried pain and Nighy’s of restrained empathy. They seemed to believe they were in a better movie than the one they were in, and for stretches of time, they make us believe them.