The inspirational true story of the Homeless World Cup – an international football tournament for homeless people founded in 2001 – would probably be better told as a documentary. Instead, it’s been turned into this well-meaning (and often well-acted) but sugary underdog sports drama where everyone’s the underdog, from screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and director Thea Sharrock, with composite fictional characters and storylines gleaned from interviews and research.
It has an eccentric, not to say surreal bit of casting: Bill Nighy plays the football manager with his own standard-issue backstory of emotional pain to go with all the players’ hidden personal dramas. And he performs it with the same elegant dark suit and diffident, quizzical mannerisms that he might use to portray a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, only this time he’s in the dugout shouting. Nighy is always such a likable performer that he gets away with it, though it would make more sense if his character actually was a fellow of All Souls College who’d been pressed into service as a football manager as some kind of community service for drinking too much port and punching someone at high table.
Although hugely charming, Nighy doesn’t really convince here. His character is called Mal, a retired professional manager coaching homeless guys; he sees Vinny (Micheal Ward) playing in the park and signs him up, sensing both his talent and his emotional pain. Vinny is at first too proud to admit he’s split from his wife and daughter and sleeping in his car. Soon Vinny and the rest of the team are at the Homeless World Cup in Rome, very excited. But the tensions between these guys mean a succession of flareups and cathartic confrontations, in which our heroes disclose their problems and come to realise what’s important isn’t winning at all costs but friendship and community. A very good moral, of course, but the tropes are a bit familiar.
• The Beautiful Game is in cinemas from 22 March and on Netflix from 29 March.
