Duelo de Campeões

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.

This film records the most unlikely upset in World Cup history, the 1-0 United States defeat of England in the Brazilian mining city of Belo Horizonte ("Beautiful Horizon"), 300 miles north of Rio di Janeiro, on June 29, 1950. The United States was a team of part time amateurs who were drawn against the mighty English squad, playing in its first World Cup and determined to show the world their mastery of the game they had invented. Football fans who saw the score reported assumed the score line was a typographical error, as it was unthinkable that the US could even stay with, much less defeat, an English side which featured some of the games all time great players, including Billy Wright, Sir Stanley Matthews (who sat out the match), Stan Mortenson and Wilf Mannion. London bookmakers offered odds of 500-1 against such an preposterous event. The New York Times refused to run the score when it was first reported, deeming it a hoax.

The US team was a collection of first generation American soccer players drawn mainly from club teams on the east coast and included five St. Louisans, four of whom grew up in the "Hill" neighborhood of South St. Louis: goalie Frank Borghi, fullback Frank Colombo, forward Gino Pariani, and midfielder Frank "Pee Wee" Wallace, and also the long time St. Louis University soccer coach, halfback Harry Keough. The US had only one full time professional player on its roster, Hugh McIllvenny from Scotland. They had played together only two weeks when they departed for Brazil. They'd lost to Italy in a World Cup warm up by the score of 9-0, and had been defeated by Spain in the World Cup opener 3-1.

It was reported that the American players were so confident that victory was unlikely that several of them were out late the night before the game enjoying themselves and sported hangovers at the opening kickoff. Borghi was quoted afterwards as saying he was hoping to hold the English to five or six goals. The English team poured forward, firing shot after shot at goalie Borghi, but could not score. Six minutes before half time, U.S. center forward Joe Gaetgens, a Haitian born dishwasher living in New York, redirected with a lunging header a shot by half back Walter Bahr, who is himself, incidentally, the long time Penn State soccer coach and the father of NFL placekickers and former Penn State soccer players Chris and Matt Bahr. The misdirected shot beat England keeper Bert Williams, and the single goal stood up through a second half where the Americans withstood constant English pressure and numerous near misses, including three shots off the woodwork.

The Brazilian crowd thoroughly enjoyed the failures of the pretournament favorites and carried the US team off the field after the final whistle. The game was noteworthy for the complete lack of interest in the result by the American press and public. The only American reporter at the game, Dent McSkimming of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, used his vacation time and paid his own way to Brazil to cover the game.

Author Geoffrey Douglas' book advances the premise that the victory was not a fluke when one considers the character and promise of the winning American players, as evidenced by the upstanding and honorable men they came to be.

Trivia: the English national soccer team has never again worn blue shirts they wore against the US in that game.

The film was shot on location in St. Louis and Brazil, and features former US National Soccer Team Captain John Harkes as a consultant and soccer playing extra.

This was a good movie, regardless of whether it was about soccer or not. The movie had good actors, and some surprise actors (Gavin Rossdale, John Harkes, etc.) and was a good "person" movie. It did do a good job of telling about the 1950 upset victory for the Americans, and it was good that it stopped right there and didn't include the following matches in that World Cup for the Amerians of losing to Spain 1-3 and Chile 2-6. So it ended on a good note. I actually had a comment about one of the user comments....the one gloating about his daughter's soccer team and how good they are because they are Arizona state champions. I have lived in Ohio most of my life and lately I have lived in Arizona....I am sorry to break it to him, but Arizona soccer is terrible. Teams in Arizona would get crushed by teams in Ohio. A state champion of Arizona is a mediocre Ohio team. Or MIssouri, or Michigan, or California, or Florida.

"The Game Of Their Lives" lives up to expectations as a exciting underdog sports movie. I loved it. Saw it in a theater with only 3 other people - at noon, on a Monday, raining - but it didn't matter because I was engaged and wrapped up in the 1950's story of a bunch of ordinary guys who did something extraordinary.

Based on a real event with real, still living, people it is about heros of WWII who came home and went about their lives until asked to form a team for the World Cup soccer matches. They have only weeks and decide to get some players from the east coast and some from one area of St. Louis, MO. from the Italian enclave known as The Hill.

Frank Borghi (Gerard Butler) is the goalie and a leader of the group. The challenge is to get the whole group to pull together and mesh the different styles to make a team that may make a good showing. They don't expect to win as most of the teams they will play are more or less professionals and/or have played together for years.

The soccer playing is exciting even for this old gal who knows little about the game. The cinematography is very good and keeps the pace of the game and shots of the crowds and sports announcers ticking along and by the end when time runs out on the English players, and the Americans have won this great upset, I was ready to cheer too.

I disagree with most of the reviews I have read. This is a good sports movie and the performances and pacing are as good as "Rudy" or any other underdog film.

One thing I loved was the look of the people and homes and cars. It was the 1950's again and the music I danced to was just right. One for my movie collection. 9/10

If you enjoy soccer, you'll really like this movie about USA underdogs playing the Brits, the best in the world in 1950. The audience I was with consisted of adults and kids in soccer uniforms. The movie drew cheers and applause especially during the final confrontation. Gerard Butler as the great goalkeeper Frank Borghi really gives this movie heart and soul. The actors were chosen for their ability to actually play soccer so the game sequences are very realistic. Butler especially throws his body into a bone-crunching depiction of a goalkeeper with the heart of a lion.

You don't have to be know much about soccer to enjoy this movie. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes an exciting movie and wonderful acting. Three cheers!