The movie works because it is, above all, sincere. It's not sports by the numbers. The starring performance by Kuno Becker is convincing and dimensional and we begin to care for him. He plays Santiago Munez, a busboy in a Los Angeles Chinese restaurant, who plays in an after-work soccer league so deprived that he wears cardboard shin protectors. Then he's spotted by a former soccer pro (Stephen Dillane), who tells him he has potential, and arranges for him to get a tryout with Newcastle United.
That would however involve an air ticket to England. Santiago has some money saved, but his dad (Tony Plana) nicks it to buy a pickup truck and start his own landscaping business. This is cruel, but perhaps more practical than betting the money on a future in soccer. Santiago's grandmother (Miriam Colon) says she hasn't worked for a lifetime without having some savings, and pays for him to fly to London out of Mexico City -- a wise precaution, since he has no American passport or identity.
In Newcastle, Santiago undergoes a rough initiation at the hands of the hardened soccer pros, gets his first experience of soccer in the mud, and almost loses his place on the team because of his asthma. What saves him is an accidental friendship with the team's superstar Gavin Harris (Alessandro Nivola), a party animal. How the season turns out and how Santiago fares I will leave for you to discover, not only in this movie, but in "Goal! 2: Living the Dream," which comes out later this year, and in "Goal! 3," scheduled for 2007. The fact that "Goal! 4" is not in pre-production will soon, I am sure, be remedied.
Before "Goal!" began, I moaned to a colleague that I was dreading the screening. Any movie named "Goal!" that needs an exclamation mark seems to be protesting too much, and the words "The Dream Begins" suggest that the snores will shortly follow. I see an average of one sports movie a month in which an underdog (or underhorse, or undergymnast) overcomes the odds in order to earn their exclamation mark. I know all about the grizzled coaches, the mean teammates, the dad who doesn't understand and the girl who does.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46gppqkXam1pnnDq5yapV2Xsqi1zaxka2hgaw%3D%3D