Goal! The Dream Begins (DVD)
The running time is 1 hr. 58 mins..
Goal! begins as Santiago and his family is making a break for the border as they try to get inside the United States. Obviously the succeed or we wouldn't have a movie. After the short introductory scene we are once again introduced to Santiago except now he is a young man and quite adept at the game of football, or soccer for you American types (sheesh!). Catching the eye of a British scout played by Stephen Dillane he is ultimately urged to find a way to get to London for a tryout with the Newcastle United team. With a little help from grandma and against his father's wishes he makes the trip and our story begins.
The film plays itself out about as "by the book" as you can get including an ending that is surprisingly easy considering the myriad of options they had. Considering this is a trilogy they could have done a lot more to build character and suspense. While Santiago's attempts to make the Newcastle team are supposed to be enthralling they are just filler as we follow along the plodding story to the end we can see before the ten minute mark.
On an acting level, while good at the nice guy bit, Kuno Becker has a hard time emoting any feelings or delivering even a slightly emotional line, and there aren't many. Then you have Marcel Iures who plays team manager Erik Dornhelm as he preaches that you must pass the ball and then has those ever so interesting scenes where he watches while whispering, "Pass the ball... Pass it!" Yeah, we get you, one of these days he will pass it and it will be great. Thanks!
Where the film does succeed is in its visuals. The rich greens of the pitch and the actual game footage look cool, even if it isn't very engaging.
As for the special features they aren't great and they aren't too bad. There is your standard audio commentary with the filmmakers and none of the actors, a featurette on the making of the film and a little soccer 411, a look at how the made the soccer scenes including some of the CGI (yeah CGI) that they used to make them so "intense", a music video (always a worthless entry) and a highlight reel of the "Golden Moments of the FIFA World Cup," which looks at the Cup over the course of the past several years.
Considering I am not a major soccer fan I am not sure if this is something soccer fans are going to love. I know I didn't particularly enjoy it even though I did notice some potential for a worthy story. Unfortunately predictability and some poor acting get in the way of a movie that could have been box-office gold as soccer was a major part of 2006. Considering the meager $4.2 million this movie made in light of that fact, I think, says a lot about how good it is.