The Miracle Match / Wes Bentley

The writing-directing team of Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh tries to do for soccer what their films Hoosiers and Rudy did for, respectively, basketball and football. Here's another true story, a legendary upset in the early days of the World Cup. In 1950, America hastily forms a team to play against the world. We center on a tight Italian community in St. Louis providing the bulk of the national team. We meet GQ-ready stars led by goalie Frank Borgi (The Phantom of the Opera's Gerald Butler, deftly handling the duties). This brotherhood of players is unfortunately strapped to play off clichés and the movie never really engages us beyond the autumn-tinged scenery. A big part of the blame goes to the narrator telling us what we should be feeling (perhaps because we dumb Americans don't know soccer, er, football, like the rest of the world). No fault in the performance of the narrator/journalist (played by Patrick Stewart as the elder, Terry Kinney as the younger) or the rest of the cast. Perhaps the game is elusive to cinematic grandeur, (how many memorable soccer movies can you name?), but the movie is also tired and slow, something those earlier sports films were not. There's only a brief stirring when the earnest Gino (Louis Mandylor) has a wedding-date conflict and as the most famous English player of the day, Stanley Mortenson (Gavin Rossdale), patronizes the Americans in a public speech. Perhaps the studio knew they had a cellar dweller; the film was barely released and retitled for home video echoing the moniker of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. Soccer kids will enjoy the film, but others better stick to Geoffrey Douglas's book, The Game of Their Lives, the film's original title (and mistakenly left on the end credits). --Doug Thomas
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