The Match

UK/USA/Ireland 1999

Reviewed by Andy Richards

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

In the village of Inverdoune in the Scottish Highlands, young milkman Wullie Smith is pleased to hear farmer's daughter Rosemary Bailey is returning after five years at university (the two are bonded by having witnessed Wullie's brother's accidental death in their childhood). Wullie has been wearing a leg calliper since birth, and is popular with the clientele of Benny's Bar for his encyclopaedic knowledge of football history. A bet - made to settle a feud between the original owners of Benny's Bar and the pretentious L'Bistro pub - is due to be finally resolved by the hundredth annual inter-bar football match. Benny's Bar has lost for 99 years in a row, and needs to win the centenary match to avoid being turned into a car park by Gorgeous Gus, L'Bistro's owner. Benny's owner Big Tam fails to persuade Mr Doris, an embittered ex-professional, to play for the team.

When Big Tam dies of lung failure, Wullie's friend Buffalo proposes Wullie as the Benny's Bar coach. Wullie overcomes his initial reluctance and accepts. Beginning to court Rosemary's mother, Buffalo convinces Wullie to declare his love for Rosemary. Wullie asks Mr Doris to join the team, but he still refuses. Wullie's mother reveals to him that he is Benny's great-grandson. During the match, Benny's Bar are 2-0 down at half time when Mr Doris - inspired by Wullie's spirit - arrives to help the team equalise. A foul is committed and Wullie is invited to take the penalty. He scores, winning the game for Benny's.

Review

The Match is a film that strains far too hard to make you fall in love with it. Writer-director Mick Davis (whose credits include the sequel to 9 1/2 Weeks, Love in Paris) plays it safe all the way down the line, unafraid to press-gang even the hoariest of clichés into the service of a tired formula. With dismaying predictability, the film revives that staple of recent British cinema, the motley male group who rediscover their dignity under pressure (as seen in Brassed Off, The Full Monty, Up "n" Under, and so on), but strips away any hint of those films' gloomier social subtexts. Instead it substitutes homilies and postcard scenery to be chewed up by, amongst others, Richard E. Grant's pantomime villain 'Gorgeous' Gus. It's all a far cry from the delicate nuances of Bill Forsyth's best work, an opportunistic attempt to hard-sell 'eccentricity' and 'charm' at the expense of grit and substance. Even the soundtrack seems like a pastiche of Local Hero's.

As if in acknowledgement of the material's flimsiness, The Match attempts to bolster itself with a sprawl of thinly sketched comic types and gimmicky cameos. There are some dividends: Ian Holm steals scenes as Big Tam, coughing his lines out as the emphysemic owner of Benny's Bar, while Tom Sizemore seizes the opportunity to jettison his usual hard-boiled persona with his nicely understated courtship of Isla Blair. There are fewer surprises from the remaining cast of dependable British character actors, few of whom are given much room to manoeuvre. Max Beesley struggles to hold the film's centre as Wullie, saddled with a redundant calliper as a clunking metaphor for his inability to take pride in himself, and spurred on for the final triumphant penalty kick by the image of his dead brother (just as Sean Bean's loser-made-good was in When Saturday Comes). Davis seems to have fatally confused simplicity with simple-mindedness, for this is surely a dismayingly complacent backwater for a once-fresh subgenre to find itself washed up in.

Credits

Producers
Allan Scott
Guymon Casady
Screenplay
Mick Davis
Director of Photography
Witold Stok
Editor
Kate Williams
Production Designer
John Frankish
Music
Harry Gregson-Williams
©PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Inc
Production Companies
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment presents
a Propaganda Films/Allan Scott production in association with Irish Dreamtime
Executive Producers
Steve Golin
Pierce Brosnan
Beau St. Clair
Robert Kosberg
Co-producer
Chris Symes
Executive in Charge of Production
Tim Clawson
Production Co-ordinator
Ingrid Litman
Unit Production Manager
Graeme Gordon
Location Manager
Brian Horsburgh
Post-production Supervisors
Sean Wimmer
London:
Steve Harrow
Post Supervisor
Propaganda Films:
Glenn Kiser
Assistant Directors
Tommy Gormley
Sarah Purser
Jonathan Farmer
Ted Mitchell
Script Supervisors
Cheryl Leigh
Additional:
Janis Watt
Casting
Jeremy Zimmermann
ADR Voice:
Brendan Donnison
Camera Operators
Rodrigo Gutierrez
Additional:
Chris Plevin
Steadicam Operator
Pete Robertson
Digital Optical Effects
Pixel Magic
Digital Effects Supervisor:
Raymond McIntyre Jr
Executive Producer:
Belinda S. Merritt
Special Effects
Emergency House Special Effects
Art Director
Lucinda Thomson
Storyboard Artist
Jane Clark
Costume Designer
Pam Downe
Wardrobe Supervisor
Deirdre Johnstone
Make-up
Designer:
Julie Dorrat-Keenan
Artists:
Heather Millington
Nikki Brannan
Title Design
Deborah Ross Film Design
Titles/Opticals
Howard Anderson Company
Musicians
Warren Casey
Bob Daspit
Miamon Miller
Donelle Page
Jeff Rona
Orchestrations
Harry Gregson-Williams
Music Supervisor
David Klotz
Executive in Charge of Music for PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
Dawn Solér
Music Editors
Richard Whitfield
Additional:
Sherry Whitfield
Carl Zittrer
Recordist/Mixer
Slamm Andrews
Music Programmer
Steve Jablonsky
Soundtrack
"Hot Love" by Marc Bolan, performed by T-REX; "F.B.I." by Hank Marvin, Jet Harris, Bruce Welch, performed by The Shadows; "Let's Stick Together" by Wilbert Morrison, performed by Bryan Ferry; "You Can Get It If You Really Want" by Jimmy Cliff, performed by Desmond Dekker; "Pretty Flamingo" by Mark Barkan, performed by Manfred Mann; "Celebration" by Claydes Smith, Dennis Thomas, Earl Tess, Eumir Deodato, George Brown, James Warren Taylor, Robert Mickens, Robert Bell, Ronald Bell, performed by Kool and the Gang; "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Randy Bachman, performed by Bachman-Turner Overdrive; "Bad Loser" by Gavin Sutherland, performed by Sutherland Brothers and Quivers; "With a Girl Like You" by Reg Presley, performed by The Troggs; "Deep and Meaningless" by Sean Kelly, performed by The Lovies; "Oh Yeah" by Bryan Ferry, performed by Roxy Music; "Rock and Roll Part 2" by Gary Glitter, Mike Leander, performed by Gary Glitter; "Keep On Running" by Jackie Edwards, performed by Spencer Davis Group; "Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again" by Gary Glitter, Mike Leander
Sound Mixers
Colin Nicolson
Additional:
Louis Kramer
Re-recording Mixers
John Ross
Joe Barnett
Dorian Cheah
Supervising Sound Editor
Frank Gaeta
Sound Editors
Javier Bennassar
David Grant
Michael Hertlein
Michael Mullane
Lucy Sustar
Roland Thai
ADR
Supervisor:
Thomas Jones
Mixers:
Tony Anscombe
Scott Jones
Graeme MacKenzie
Foley
Walkers:
David Fein
Diane Marshall
Mixer:
Mary Erstad
Football Adviser
Danny Crainie
Stunt Co-ordinators
Nicholas Powell
Greg Powell
Stuart Clark
Animal Wrangler
Creature Feature
Cast
Max Beesley
Wullie Smith
Isla Blair
Sheila Bailey
James Cosmo
Billy Bailey
Laura Fraser
Rosemary Bailey
Richard E. Grant
Gorgeous Gus
David Hayman
Scrapper
Ian Holm
Big Tam
Neil Morrissey
Mr Doris (Piss Off)
David O'Hara
Mechanic
Bill Paterson
Tommy Van Driver
Iain Robertson
Danny Van Boy
Tom Sizemore
Buffalo
Sally Howitt
Carol McGhee
Michael Nardone
Dingus
Sam Fox
Patsy Kennedy
Jonathan Watson
Charlie
Paul Doonan
Lefty
Mark O'Hare
Righty
Gary McCormack
Growler
Hope Ross
Anna Smith
Andy Gray
Arrow
Gary Lewis
Dead-Eye
Russell Barr
Nancy-No-Pants
Chris Symes
English Harry
Edward McQuillan
Pasty Face
Ron Donachie
Happy Feet
Valerie Hunter
policewoman
Michael Mullen
young Johnny
Bernard Joy
young Wullie Smith
Emma Crichton
young Rosemary Bailey
Kay Gallie
Mrs Garner, little old lady
Alan Shearer
himself
Ann Murray
woman in telephone box
Pierce Brosnan
John McGee
Danny Crainie
Paul Downie
Scott Lomax
Stefan Lopinski
Alex MacAuley
Stuart MacLeod
William Mahomet
Michael McNaught
Shaun Russell
Chris Wilson
Alan Winter
The Bistro Boys
Cashie
Brigitte the Cow
Kenny Gibson
voice of Mr Jamieson
Certificate
15
Distributor
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
8,671 feet
96 minutes 21 seconds
Dolby digital
Colour by
Technicolor
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011