The Beautiful Game movie review: Bill Nighy brings his B-game to Netflix’s by-the-numbers sports drama, about a team of homeless men competing at a football championship.
A grieving septuagenarian trains a team of hapless young men to compete in the Homeless World Cup in The Beautiful Game, a well-intentioned, feel-good sports drama that has arrived, destined to be forgotten, on Netflix. Directed by Thea Sharrock, the movie doesn’t so much resemble the similarly themed Jhund and Dream — also about the unfortunate being uplifted via sport — as it does a season of a particularly uninspired British sitcom.
The always excellent Bill Nighy stars as Mal, who has been training a team of homeless British men for over a decade. Not all the players in this team are from the UK, however. One of them is a stateless Syrian refugee. More more worryingly, only one among them can actually play football. But when Mal spots the talented Vinny mucking about by himself on a field one day, he extends an invitation for him to join team. Vinny, however, doesn’t want to admit that he has fallen on hard times — in their initial meeting, he is openly disdainful of the other team members, and appears to take offence at their assumption that he’s homeless as well. But he gets the nudge that he needs after a heartbreaking meeting with his little daughter, and finally decides to join Mal and the boys on their World Cup campaign in Rome.
