Jason says:
“NEXT GOAL WINS is an inspirational sports story that follows a
familiar enough template that if it were fictional, we might be tempted
to roll our eyes at just how far the filmmakers were pushing it. This
kind of extreme-underdog story does occasionally happen, though, and
one of the great things about sport is the way that it occasionally
serves this kind of story up. The story of American Samoa’s national
team is a button-pushing crowd-pleaser, sure, but it’s a darn good one.
“The American Samoan side, you see, was infamously bad at soccer. They
were 0-32 in FIFA-sanctioned matches, with the most infamous loss
coming in 2001, when they lost to Australia 31-0, an absurd score for a
game where the point totals are usually in the low single digits. The
film picks up ten years later, with a volunteer coach attempting to
lead this team of amateurs in their first international competition in
for years. When that doesn’t go so well, they turn to help from the US
Soccer Association, which helps them hire fiery Dutch coach Thomas
Rongen, who helps recruit Samoan-American Rawlston Masantai &
soldier Ramin Ott to join captain Liatama Amisone Jr., Jaiyah ‘Johnny’
Saelua, and redemption-seeking goalkeeper Nicky Salapu.
“It’s easy to forget just how difficult sports can be at the highest
levels, not just for spectators, but also for the coaches. There are a
ton of laughs to be found in how both Rongen and volunteer coach Larry
Mena’o react with mounting levels of frustration and profanity, not
having realized just how far below their expectations a national team
could fall (amusingly, the parents who brought their young
soccer-playing kids to the screening I attended did not anticipate the
amount of swearing involved). It’s what makes Salapu kind of a
fascinating story; he’s probably the best player in his Seattle rec
league, for example, and during the clips of various matches, the
commentators almost seem sorry for him, implying he’s a good keeper who
is not helped by a porous defense or being just a cut below the
pro-quality guys he’s facing. It helps firmly establish what a lot of
sports movies can’t, that just making a respectable show against some
of these other teams is in some ways just as good as a victory.
“Saupu isn’t the only interesting story to be found among the subjects
of NEXT GOAL WINS; there must have been times when directors Mike Brett
and Chris Jamison must have felt like they hit some sort of jackpot of
people with movie-worthy storylines. Some do a particularly fine job
of highlighting the situation in American Samoa, whether the aftermath
of a devastating tsunami or how many of the young men on this island
such as Ott find that the only real opportunity available to him is
joining the American military. Some are closer to pure sports stories,
such as Salapu’s desire for redemption or how former college player
Masantai, while he takes pride in representing his grandfather’s
homeland, is also hoping to make an impression on a pro team
somewhere. There’s a continuing thread about Jaiyah, whose identify
cards read ‘third gender’; being transgendered is apparently not nearly
so stigmatized in the Pacific island cultures as in the west, but she
is still a fairly unusual personality to be dropped into the middle of
this sort of environment or film.
“Brett & Jamison keep much of the attention firmly on the Samoans
and their attempt to acclimate to Rongen’s more intense style, but he
winds up being a worthy story in his own right. A weathered man in his
fifties, he and his wife have recently lost their daughter, and it
turns out that a team full of young amateurs may be just what he needs,
even if it’s the sort of group he is not used to dealing with. The
filmmakers point out that American Samoa is a very religious territory
while Rongen has reason to be more cynical than the typical atheist,
but they don’t try to great that narrative onto what winds up being a
very nice story about the place, the players, and the job thawing him
out. It’s an impressive job of assembling all of these storylines
without feeling like any have been sidelined or overemphasized, while
still leaving time for the games of the World Cup qualifiers against
Tonga, the Cook Islands, and Samoa to be exciting soccer to watch, as
well as the answer to whether American Samoa can break their streak.
“The answer to that question is probably not going to be a huge
surprise, although if the makers of this sort of movie have done their
job right, the how of it is just as important and there’s a connection
to the people involved. In this case, they found a story that doesn’t
need much embellishing and are able to get just what makes it a great
sports story across. 4.25 cats
“Seen 17 February 2014 in the Regent Theartre (Gathr Preview Series,
digital).” |
