7/10
FIFA financed movie is naturally one sided but well made and quite entertaining
17 July 2014
A FIFA financed movie about the history of the FIFA. It is at least quite unusual to have a sports movie that is not about sportsmen but about sports administrators (Moneyball is the only one that comes to my mind). Tim Roth plays FIFA president Sepp Blatter as a honest, efficient if tough administrator (you really need to have a very huge ego to finance a movie where you are the hero, though, as one friend told me, at least Blatter had the sense not to hire Brad Pitt to play himself). The production values are fine, which is to be expected given the reported budget of almost 30 million dollars. Not a great film obviously, but not as bad as expected. It is quite entertaining if naturally very one sided. With Gerard Depardieu (in an enjoyable performance) and Sam Reilly as former FIFA presidents Jules Rimet and Joao Havelange and Thomas Kretschmann as Horst Dassler, head of sports apparel giant Adidas. Amusingly, the movie has a quite crude anti– English tone: every English character in the movie looks bad (England and the other British sides initially refused to join FIFA, seeing it as an upstart organization).
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