5 Best Sports Films Ever
Football Journalist Iain MacIntosh gives thecallsheet.co.uk his 5 Best Sporting Films ever;
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5. Mike Bassett - England Manager
Alright, so this was never a movie likely to trouble the Academy for too long, but for some time ‘Mike Bassett – England Manager’ really was the greatest football film ever. Admittedly, this is not the most competitive genre… But look, it’s perfectly balanced, it’s packed with enough clever in-jokes for hardened fans and it’s still accessible enough for casuals and non-believers to enjoy. It is, to all intents and purposes, less of a film and more a carnival parade of skits, gags and slapstick set-pieces lined up and left ready for an emotional bitter-sweet ending, but then so is supporting England, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s the strength of this film; that it refuses to dress football up or perch it on some lofty pedestal. It is, after all, a ridiculous sport filled with ridiculous people doing ridiculous things. So, yes, ‘Bassett’ is a silly little English film. But it made me laugh until snot came out and that’s something I value very highly when appraising a movie. And, lest we forget, there is That Speech. Seriously, if you can get through Ricky Tomlinson’s beautiful recital of Kipling’s ‘If’ and the gloriously sweary pay-off without blubbing like a young Paul Gascoigne, then I don’t even want to know you.
4. Cool Runnings
Keeping it highbrow, ‘Cool Runnings’ deserves inclusion primarily because until ‘Marley & Me’, it was the only film that had ever made me cry. The true story of the Jamaican bobsleigh team and their journey to the Winter Olympics gets the full Disney treatment and is no worse off for the experience. John Candy is at his ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” best as Irving Blitzer, disgraced ex-athlete turned drink-soaked bookie, and the coach to four Jamaican hopefuls who say things like, “Yo, Sanka. You dead, mon?” Looking back from these more enlightened times, there’s a possibility that the cartoon accents and mannerisms were, if we’re being kind, a bit patronising. But let’s not get too bogged down with revisionism. Sport, to me at least, is about inclusion, the battle for respect as a competitor and the challenge of trying to overturn insurmountable odds. This is a fun family film, it makes you tingle in all the right places, it still makes me laugh today and that bit…sniffle…with his Dad…and the t-shirt….sob. Oh God, here come the waterworks again.
3. Ali
When I discovered that Will Smith was going to be playing Mohammed ‘Ali’ in Michael Mann’s 2001 biopic, I laughed so hard that I very nearly passed out. The skinny kid? From ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’? To play the most charismatic sports star of all time? I thought that Mann had wrecked the film before he’d even started. Well, more fool me. It takes approximately ten minutes for Smith, big ears and all, to fade away and for Ali to reappear in his place, all muscle and magic and charm. You know the Ali story already, everyone does, but what makes this film sing is the fact that all the old anecdotes, all the jokes, all the quotes, are so perfectly delivered that you find yourself laughing out loud as if it’s the first time you’ve heard them. It’s a magnificent story, it’s beautifully filmed and the scenes with journalist Howard Cosell are some of the warmest and most endearing of the entire movie. I don’t recall who actually won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2002, but it must have been something bloody amazing to beat Smith into second place.
2. The Damned United
Treated as a serious documentary of Brian Clough, ‘The Damned United’ would not score highly. Treated simply as a stand-alone sports film, it’s one of the best in the business. Clough was, if anything, far stranger than Michael Sheen’s depiction, his row with Don Revie was certainly not sparked by a missed handshake and Peter Taylor was rather more than an affable bucket and sponge man, but who cares? The performances here are so magnificent that even the most ardent Derby County nerd would stop caring about historical accuracy long before the halfway point. Sheen is obviously brilliant as Clough, but Jim Broadbent makes a perfect Sam Longson, complete with his Hindenberg moment, the grim realisation that he can no longer control the man he has put in power. Pick of the bunch, however, is Colm Meaney who simply IS Revie; dogmatic, patriarchal and almost extremely successful. Wisely, the film puts the football on the backburner and concentrates on character development, taking Clough from pugnacious upstart to ego-crazed emperor to a man on the brink of breakdown. By the end, with all of his self-inflicted problems, you’re not entirely sure whether to feel sympathy or scorn for Clough, the one issue on which the film and real life agree.
1. Rocky
There are more serious films, there are more worthy films, there are certainly more intelligent films, but you just don’t get a better sports film than ‘Rocky’, do you? Seriously, it’s got everything. It is all of the love and joy and fear and pain and passion and anxiety of sport distilled, refined and decanted into two hours of tingly, nipple-hardening montage-reliant magic. It’s a brutal, uplifting fairy tale with the perfect direction, the perfect theme tune and the perfect writing and, yes, it still staggers me that Stallone actually penned it himself. Gnarled veteran Burgess Meredith gives the performance of a lifetime as Mickey Goldmill, an accurate representation of how Yoda would have turned out if he’d ignored the monastical bobbins of the Jedi faith and focused on simply beating people up and shouting. Granted, without the involvement of Mr T, there are departments in which it falls short of Rocky III, but if you’re looking for a movie to capture the very essence of sport, the sweaty, tear-stained, musky bit rather than the navel-gazing, profound and intellectual bit, this is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the genre. Altogether now….AAAADRIAAAANE!
Iain's latest book, Football Manager Stole My Life is out now and available on Amazon
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