Cast:
Tim Roth (Sepp Blatter), Gérard Depardieu (Jules Rimet), Sam Neill (João Havelange), Fisher Stevens (Carl Hirschmann), Jemima West (Annette Rimet), Thomas Kretschmann (Horst Dassler), Julian Miller (Ludwig Sylow), Jason Barry (Edgar Willcox), Martin Jarvis (Sir Stanley Rous), Bruce Mackinnon (Louis Muhlinghaus), Anthony Higgins (Lord Kinnaird), Nicholas Gleaves (Henri Delaunay), Richard Dillane (Larsen), and Antonio de la Torre (Enrique Buero) Directed by Frédéric Auburtin.
Review:
"What’s very hard for me is that I’m not a stupid director that took the job for a big check. I tried to do my best, and little by little because of the way the production went and because of FIFA’s involvement and because there was no marketing, now when you Google it, the film is the worst ever and biggest box office disaster."
To get myself into the mood to watch a movie about FIFA, I decided to watch the first thing that popped into my head about reacting to United Passions...a contemporary John Oliver clip. Sure, my brain may think of Oliver as a lizard that happens to be able to talk, but I did want some sort of reference for what folks thought of United Passions before it came out. Apparently, the clip showed that a screening in New York had just one person buy a ticket for the film when it premiered in America in 2015, after it had been shown around other countries in the summer of 2014 as a French production that is mostly told in English (aside from a few parts with English subtitles). Apparently, it sold about $300 worth of tickets when it premiered in a few theaters in the USA. No, not $900 in each theater, $900 combined. I could have saved even slightly more time by watching Tim Roth talk about the movie for a minute, but nobody wants to watch an actor apologize for a movie, especially when seeing them be in crap is far funnier. Thankfully, I did not have to buy this movie to see it. Generally, I try to avoid wasting my money when it comes to spending time (109 minutes this time) with movies, so one can thank YouTube for bringing curiosity to the masses. Aside from seeing a blurb designating this film being shown at the Cannes Film Festival (?), one can only expect what to see from a work of "dramatic fiction". The only reason I picked this film is because of the tremendous coincidence of FIFA deciding to hold a World Cup in Qatar (totally a place with no human rights violations, huh?) in the middle of November. Just a reminder: this film was released in America in the wake of the 2015 FIFA scandal, which saw accusations of bribery of FIFA officials and the eventual resignation of its federation president. Of course, the funny thing is the fact that the movie was released in the summer of 2014 to coincide with the 2014 World Cup, held in South Africa (with the movie ending on a re-enactment of the announcement of the country being the host of the Cup). The film was written by Frédéric Auburtin and Jean-Paul Delfino. The French director had worked as an assistant director on a handful of films from 1985 to 1998 (most notably The Man in the Iron Mask, for example) He directed three films (with one film segment, with none generally known) alongside a few television projects, but this is his most known effort. In fact, it is the last film he has directed. FIFA funded most of the $30 million project, if you did not already know (going from funding 40% of the film as intended to much more).
Who the hell wanted to make a movie not about the game of soccer, but the founding of an organization? More specifically, who the hell wanted a movie about International Association Football Federation (FIFA)? For the rest of this review, I will refer to the game as soccer, if only because I refuse to not stop saying soccer. Anyway, this movie about a soccer federation has the dubious task of trying to tell a history that spanned many decades, whether that involves the growth of the organization in the turn of the 20th century to the first World Cup in 1930 to the delay of not holding a World Cup from after 1938 until 1950, the "Death Match" in 1942, to the Blatter era (the only word that I can think of for him is "hack"). Incidentally, FIFA saw England join it three times: 1905, 1924, and 1946, which is pretty contrary to the opening sequence of seeing England (referred to lovingly and mockingly numerous times in the films as "inventor of the game") reject FIFA. A documentary, preferably not funded by FIFA, might have proved more interesting. Hell, watching soccer itself may have been less of a timewaster than this. For one, it would have actual compelling aspects to it, if only to see the different angles of how an organization came together: the real truth, corruption and all. I feel like I am watching a really glossy PR ad, one that looks more like 1954 than 2014 in general excitement for the material it wants to show, which is "mild". There is something amusing about presenting the 1950 World Cup match between Brazil and Uruguay in a somber matter (where the host nation Brazil lost in the final group stage needing only to tie to win the Cup) when it comes and goes like all the other things that happen in the movie. The most amusing sequence is a stock montage that sees clips from various World Cups to pass time, which even has a shot of Roth standing by a closed casket of a dead person (yes, seriously). I especially like this one line that talks about how the Olympics is political, but that the World Cup is about people...before a line a couple of minutes later about South Africans and that it is impossible to "keep politics out of sport" contrary to the belief of South Africans. You have Tim Roth play a person born in Switzerland, "Academy Award producer Fisher Stevens" play a Dutch man and Sam Neill play a Brazilian. Roth shows up by the hour mark, after Depardieu has dominated a good part of it and Neill has just managed to come in the picture at the 49th minute. Perhaps there is a certain irony in an actor taking a role solely for the money when the person he is playing has been dogged about claims of corruption and financial mismanagement. This is even more amusing since the film is actually mostly about the tenure where Neill's character is in charge rather than with Roth (Blatter was not FIFA president until 1998). Roth may talk all he wants about his apologies for not questioning the script ("Where's all the corruption in the script? Where is all the back-stabbing, the deals? So it was a tough one. I tried to slide in a sense of it, as much as I could", an actual quote from Roth), but he is laughably stiff here. There is a black hole where a performance should be: a vanity project that doesn't have the slightest bit of charisma from any of the performances that make the main actors look like anything other than accountants. Neill looks like he wants to be anywhere else, while Depardieu is having a ball in terms of zoned out acting. The director may say he tried to insert ironic parts past FIFA's "observation". Who came up with the idea to show kids playing soccer in a dump throughout the movie? Actually, that was the writers, who apparently came up with it to avoid having the film be connected with their first idea of an investigator looking at the history of FIFA in corruption. Is it irony or unintentional amusement in the face of FIFA wasting money on this? As a whole, the only thing to say about the movie is that it sucks. Watching eleven corporate videos in a row would be more tolerable than this movie, which is glossy in the same way a gold bucket of crap is still crap. Watching a soccer game end in a tie may actually be more entertaining than this movie, which is probably the funniest way to waste making money on a glossy propaganda mess.
Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.
Turkey Week is upon us again! This time, for the 3rd edition of this favorite project of mine of films known in some way for being "turkeys", I am going to take out the traditional method of starting with older movies and instead going in a free-form pattern to make for a few surprises. In fact, the traditional eight-course of bad movies will increase slightly...to a surprise amount. Next up in Turkey Week III: Alone in the Dark.
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