hall895 The story of the 1950 United States World Cup soccer team's stunning upset victory over England is one which has been begging to be told for years. One of the great sports underdog stories of all time and hardly anyone knows a thing about it. Many younger American soccer fans don't even know it happened. Finally, this movie has come along to shed some well-deserved light on those players who toiled mostly in anonymity and whose achievements seemed lost in the dustbin of history. It is wonderful that this movie was made. You just wish the movie had been made better. The Game of Their Lives or The Miracle Match or whatever they're calling it these days never quite hits the heights. It tells a story which needed to be told. It just doesn't tell it in an entertaining enough way.This movie is cut from the tried and true sports underdog movie mold (Hoosiers, Rocky, Rudy and so on) but it never has the same sense of energy which drove those films forward. While those films had a certain zest to them as they built towards a thrilling conclusion this film just kind of slogs along. It's not nearly as engrossing as it could have, and given the great story they had to work with, probably should have been. The fact that certain details of history have been twisted and changed to try to make things seem more dramatic than they actually were doesn't help either. A misguided attempt to create a "villain" on the English team also falls flat. It seems the filmmakers were afraid to allow this story to speak for itself and were determined to spice it up with some artificial drama. The fake drama doesn't work and we're not left with enough real drama either.This is not to say that The Game of Their Lives (or The Miracle Match or whatever) is a bad movie. It's OK. You just get the sense that this story deserved a movie which is better than just OK. The acting is fine with Gerard Butler and Wes Bentley the key figures in a cast which otherwise is made up of mostly unknowns with the exception of, oh sweet irony, Englishman Patrick Stewart as the American soccer reporter who serves as the film's narrator while relishing the memory of the English defeat. The visuals are very good and the soccer scenes quite well done. But what's lacking is drama. The film never really grabs you, from the "getting to know you" phase as we meet the players all the way through the "thrilling" climax which comes off as rather ordinary. And what the U.S. team achieved in Brazil in 1950 was anything but ordinary. Unfortunately the full impact of what those men accomplished and who those men really were doesn't come across in this film. And that's a shame.

anarchistica Take every sports movie cliché, add a whole lot of annoying, pounding music, and finish it off with some nice depraved Americanisms. Patriotism? Nonsense about "honor" and "respect" (we're talking about a bunch of guys who're playing football here)? Arrogant, haughty stereotypical English? Hilarious comparisons between athletes and state-empowered murderers ("soldiers")? Predictable outcome? No mention of what happened afterwards (US lost remaining games and Korean War)?Even worse is the constant repetition of how great football is. From the very first dialogue to the last, a constant reminder that football is awesome, great, fantastic and the most democratic sport.It's just a crappy sports movie with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Vasco Rodrigues making some easy money. Please, waste your time on something else.

boothenendusa Certainly there have been sports films that were more technically unacceptable to this one, but never in the history of celluloid has so much carelessness for a true account been displayed on the silver screen. "The Game of Their Lives" is a revolting untrue story of the United States' 1950 World Cup upset of England. Having read the book the film is loosely )and I do mean loosely based on), the story plays on film like a made-for-Disney Sunday night TV movie. The half truths in this debacle start right from the outset as the St. Louis playground team gets notice of a World Cup tryout. The World Cup in 1950 was not the World Cup of today. It was only the fourth tournament, and first since 1938. For the players to suggest at that point in time that World Cup was considered the greatest sporting event in the world was for all intents and purposes false. The glamor and glitz associated with the World Cup did not come until later. According to the book, there wasn't much of a St. Louis-New York rivalry. It wasn't like the 1980 Olympic hockey team with its Minnesota-Boston rivalry. The players, if I remember correctly, came together without much fuss and did their job. The preoccupation with Stanley Mortensen is a mystery too. Did I hear correctly during the banquet introduction speech where he was introduced as scoring three goals in the FA Cup final in 1950? Sorry. That didn't happen until three years later. The book also said nothing about a scathing Mortensen speech. I highly doubt it would be in any player's nature to stand up and directly insult a team which had no chance of making an impact. And...The USA did NOT open the 1950 World Cup against England. They lost 3-1 to Spain a mere four days earlier, playing well against another good side. That game probably illustrated that the Americans weren't exactly a rag-tag bunch more than the England one, but the filmmakers didn't mention it. Or the 5-2 loss to Chile which ended the Yanks tournament. And guess what? After all the excitement made over topping England, the U.S.A. finished last in the group. England only picked up two points (a win was worth two points back then and not three) against Chile. So, the win over England might have been more of a story of a fading power than a miraculous upset. The crux of the book was the players relationship to their families and athletics. It only gets a basic treatment in the film. As for Haitian goal scorer Joe Gaetjens, the filmmakers treat his character like a right loon who is deeply under the spell of voodoo. It's laughable and racist to some degree in how he is portrayed. There also is no discussion of his life after he scores a goal. The film suddenly ends after the win. Sure we get to see the remaining remembers of the real team get a nod at the 2004 MLS All-Star game, but what about the others? Joe, I'm afraid wasn't one of them as he was kidnapped and killed in Haiti for political reasons in the 1960s. Why wasn't that in the film? The absolute worst part of the film was the presentation of the uniforms. (First of all, was not the constant begging for uniforms like the Bad News Bears a bit pathetic?) A general or some high-ranking military schmoe presents the players with the new uniforms on a tarmac in Brazil. What we get here is some of the most vile military to sports comparisons you'll ever see. It's the kind of stuff that makes you curl up and wonder what other countries will think when they see it. In fact, the whole movie is.

Erinn Graves This is such an awesome movie! I can't believe that it didn't get the PR it deserved, the only way I found it was being a fan of Gerard Butler and having two free tickets to an AMC theater so I perused the NOW Playing list and found ONE theater in Denver with it. The movie chronicles a then unheard of situation- An American Team playing in the World Cup. The cast is all-star including Patrick Stewart, John Rhys-Davies, Bill Smitrovich, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Louis Mandylor, Zachary Ty Brian, and of course the Phantom of the Opera Gerard Butler. America has always been considered the Youngster of the World Powers, but an American World Cup Competitor? Watch this kick butt band of rebels take on the European Pros with passion, determination, and heart. This movie is on par with such immortal classics as "Rudy," "The Air Up There," "The Replacements," and "Field of Dreams."