Film Pick of the Week: Saipan - review by Yvette Huddleston
Saipan Prime Video, review by Yvette Huddleston
It’s an unusual one, this – it is a sports drama with but also a kind of morality tale. It tells the story of what happened when the Irish men’s football team made it to the finals of the World Cup in South Korea and Japan back in 2002.
At the time it was an achievement that was worth celebrating as the team had not managed to make it to that stage in the competition for quite some time. However, things went terribly wrong when the team, managed by Mick McCarthy and with Manchester United legend Roy Keane as their star player, went out to the Pacific Island of Saipan for training and to acclimatise. Before long trouble was brewing, and Keane jumped on a plane back home after a huge argument with McCarthy.
Film-makers Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa dramatize this story with energy and style, keeping the narrative to a tight 90 minutes, the length of a football match. We meet Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwick), a remote figure who lives in a huge house in Cheshire with his wife and family. There is an edge and an arrogance about him that doesn’t bode well. McCarthy (Steve Coogan) on the other had is an instantly more likeable character, well-meaning, and slightly apprehensive about how he is going to handle the notoriously difficult Keane. His misgivings prove all too accurate.
As excitement mounts in the run-up to the tournament with the fans back home hugely supportive of their team and anticipation and expectations are running high, the team arrives in Saipan. It quickly becomes clear that what was promised is not what they find – the food is below par, as is the training pitch and there aren’t even any footballs. Keane is not impressed and clearly thinks he is in a different league from his fellow players, not trying to hide his contempt for them or for the manager, which is not a good starting point. Tensions rise and Keane eventually loses his cool.
Hardwick gives an appropriately intense performance as Keane, all pent-up resentment and barely contained anger and Steve Coogan is equally impressive as bluff Yorkshireman Mick McCarthy Barnsley-born but with Irish heritage and proud of it. “I’m as Irish as you are!” he says at one point to Keane when the footballer questions the manager’s credentials. It is a fascinating account of the fall-out of two male egos butting up against each other.