“The Beautiful Game”, which was released on Netflix on last Friday, attempts to tell an inspiring story about one interesting international sports event which deserves more attention from us, but it fumbles more than once despite being well-intentioned to the core. Often trite and scattershot as trying to handle too many balls at once, the movie comes to waste the good efforts from its main cast members, and my mind could not help but get distracted by its many weak aspects while I watched the film at last night.

The main subject of the movie is the Homeless World Cup, an annual international sports tournament which was established in 1999 by the Homeless World Cup Foundation. Every year, many homeless soccer national teams around the world gather together for their little tournament, and this has certainly led to more public awareness of homelessness as it has drawn more attention from the media and the public during last two decades.

The movie begins with how one young British lad gets recruited by the coach of the British team for the Homeless World Cup. Not long after demonstrating a bit of his athletic talent in front of others in the middle of a kids’ soccer game, Vinny (Micheal Ward) is approached by the coach, and the coach, who was once a famous football team coach, suggests that Vinny should join the team. Although he has been virtually homeless for a while, Vinny is initially not so willing to join the team, but he eventually agrees to do that mainly because of the coach’s persistent persuasion.

Vinny is soon introduced to the team members, who all have each own reason for becoming homeless just like him. Although they are not that good compared to Vinny, they are all willing to do their best for proving their worth to not only others but also themselves, and their coach is certainly ready to support and encourage them as much as possible.

However, instead of developing these several main characters with more detail and nuance, the screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce hurriedly pushes them into the tournament held in Rome, and it also throws a lot more characters into the story just for some comic relief. On one hand, we are introduced to the South African team members who are quite confident about winning at the final game of the tournament, and then we are also introduced to the Japanese team members who look far more inexperienced than our British heroes. As a matter of fact, they become more interested in looking around here and there in Rome, and that certainly makes their well-meaning coach all the more frustrated.

The movie also comes to focus on the personal troubles of Vinny, who, not so surprisingly, was once a promising new soccer player. Because of his shame of being stuck with his homeless colleagues, he frequently puts the distance between himself and them, and that certainly causes a lot of conflict between him and his homeless colleagues. In case of a young man who is incidentally a recovering addict, this struggling lad often needs some help and support for staying clean and sober as before, but Vinny does not give much damn about him even though they share the same bedroom, and we are not so surprised by what eventually happen later in the story.

Meanwhile, we get a lot of football game scenes as expected, but they are not exactly thrilling or exciting in my humble opinion. Sure, the games of the Homeless World Cup are relatively more modest than your average professional football games, but the movie somehow fails to inject enough fun and excitement into these football game scenes while simply resorting to cheering a lot for many different soccer player characters in the story. Because we do not get to know them that much, we come to observe their games from the distance without much care or attention, and that is the main reason why the movie feels overlong especially during its second half.

The main cast members do try as much as they can do with their broad archetype roles, and some of them manage to acquit themselves fairly well. As the seemingly weary but undeniably dedicated coach, Bill Nighy reminds us again of how he has always been a pleasure to watch just like many other notable British character actors of his generation, and he occasionally brings a touch of class to the movie even though he is mostly limited by his rather flat character. On the opposite, Micheal Ward, who has steadily advanced since his breakout turn in “Blue Story” (2019), brings some life and intensity to his role, and his efforts almost overcome the clichéd aspects of his character at times. In case of several other cast members, Valeria Golino and Susan Wokoma provide extra humor to the story, and Callum Scott Howells, Kit Young, Sheyi Cole, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, and Robin Nazari are fairly solid as Vinny’s various team members.

In conclusion, “The Beautiful Game”, directed by Thea Sharrock, is a passable Netflix product you can watch simply for killing your spare time, and I must tell you that this is another recent disappointing sports drama film about the Homeless World Cup. Early in last year, South Korean film “Dream” (2023) also tried on the Homeless World Cup, but it was also hampered a lot by genre clichés and conventions, and the result was one of more disappointing South Korean films of last year. “The Beautiful Game” did the job a bit better in comparison at least, but it still could be much more improved in terms of story and characters, and that is really a shame to say the least.