It all comes down to this,” teases the announcer in “Goal! The Dream Begins.” And sure enough, professional soccer team Newcastle United’s hopes ride on the final minutes of a match.
Granted, that may be one of the most overused phrases in the sports-flick genre. Yet, if a movie has done its job, then there’s prickly anticipation in those words.
For all its familiar ticks – of which there are many – “Goal!” works some underdog magic in taking aspiring footballer Santiago Munez from Mexico to Los Angeles and then across the big pond to Newcastle, England.
Directed by Brit Danny Cannon, the PG movie begins with a different goal and a very different dream.
A night-time coyote run delivers the Munez family to the barbed-wire border. Scrambling up an embankment, 10-year-old Santiago loses his soccer ball and hesitates. Father Hernan shouts as the U.S. Border Patrol nears in loud pursuit.
Fast foward, and Santiago is holding down two below-the-radar jobs. He’s a busboy at a Chinese restaurant. (An exchange between him and his boss reveals with Catch-22 humor the ins and outs of green-card ownership.) And he prunes, waters and perfects the lawns of wealthy Los Angelenos with his dad.
The timing is either perfect or imperfect for a film that takes seriously but doesn’t judge how the Munez family came to live in America. (Although mostly in English, “Goal!” deftly captures Santiago’s betwixt-and-between life by moving fluidly between Spanish with subtitles and English.)
Instead, it’s the tensions between Hernan (Tony Plana) and Santiago (Kuno Becker) that threaten everyone’s hopes. Dad wants to have a father-and-son landscaping business. Santiago is grounded enough not to harbor any fantasies about becoming a professional footballer. He has even fewer illusions about constant gardening.
When a former Brit footballer and scout Glen Foy (Stephen Dillane) sees Santiago making moves in a recreational league, he tilts the balance between father and son. Consider it a sure sign Hernan has not fully assimilated that he meets the news his oldest is good enough to be a soccer professional with doubt and derision.
Hernan’s sense of betrayal is cemented when Santiago, with the support of his grandmother (the wonderful Miriam Colon), heads to England for a tryout.
Plana has the toughest assignment with the least nuanced role. And the four screenwriters try to make sense of his bitterness by telling us that once the family was in the U.S., his wife skipped out.
Colon keeps the movie emotionally fleet when it could be flat-footed. But she’s not alone. Director Cannon gets a number of performances that tend toward smart understatement. Dillane makes Foy a believable mentor. Marcel Iures’s depiction of Newcastle United’s owner blends intimidating and astute. Even Alessandro Nivola’s soccer star cad Gavin Harris has surprising texture.
A television star in Mexico, Becker plays Santiago with a gentle, occasionally wry charm that suggests American audiences will also come to know him.
If you’re wondering about the clumsy title, there are two more installments of “Goal!” in the works.
Sounds like they’ll be bending it like Becker.
“Goal! The Dream Begins” | *** RATING
PG for language, sexual situations, and some thematic material including partying|1 hour, 58 minutes| SPORTS INSPIRATIONAL|Directed by Danny Cannon; written by Dick Clement and Ian La Franais and Mike Jefferies and Adrian Buchart; photography by Michael Barrett; starring Kuno Becker, Stephen Dillane, Anna Friel, Marcel Iures, Alessandro Nivola, Miriam Colon and Tony Plana |Opens today at area theaters.
