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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