"Victory"-The Movie

First of all, the movie was horrible. We need to get rid of Silvester Stalone, and have some script changes. Either make it a true comedy or show the horrors of war, but the ambivelent middle doesn't work. This movie kept jumping from one to the other. But besides all the ridiculous stuff, the match in Paris was pretty good.

Ronaldo would be the obvious for the part of Pele. I'd like to see also George Weah, Saviola, Aimar, Figo, Beckham and Romario. And Zidane. Plus, the whole German national team.

And we can have Brad Friedel play the part of Stallone. He can't possibly be any worse at acting. If we need another token American, maybe Cobi Jones, or Alexi Lalas.

Imagine all those names. It could be a blockbuster. It will never happen, though.

 

How many Brazillian and Argentinian P.O.W's were there in the Second World War then? Zidane shouldn't be in there cos he would never have taken up arms in the first place.

 

Actually, Brazil had about 30,000 soldiers in the Allied armies in Europe. They fought in Italy. So at the time the movie takes place, there probably were no Brazilian POWs.

Argentina did not declare war on the Axis until 1945.

In Victory, they got around the lack of Brazilian POWs by having Pele say he was from Trinidad (then a British colony).

Zidane could be shown as a French POW from a colonial regimment. They can get stories for the others (folks its a movie, it is not real!)

 

"Escape to Victory" ?

Be interesting to see how this thread develops, especially since if one were to remake the movie with a similarly international cast, the US would still be the outside players (as exemplified by Sylvester Stallone, who was not THAT bad...).

Unless it was made in the US, of course.

 

Jancker will play a prison guard-turned-player.

 

We wish

 

I know. We'll have a disgraced former England star who gets sent to prison. He forms a rag tag team of misfit inmates and leads them against the team of prison guards. Vinnie Jones can play the former pro and Jason Statham can play the psycho goalie.

 

Some 6 weeks before VE Day. They really did hold off as long as possible. Any coincidence with the final destination of escaping Nazis? Surely not.

And on topic...

Don't......ever.....make.....a....film......about......football.

Every single one I have ever seen has been awful.
It's not a genre that works well. Usually, the coup de grace is the point where actual football action appears on screen.

 

Truly a great soccer flick, even if Michael Caine is like 60 with huge man boobs.

 

You're right it does sound like a Burt Reynolds movie - utter crap.
Mean Machine

 

I'm glad someone caught that. And "Escape to Victory" is essentially a loose remake of Burt Reynolds' "The Longest Yard".

 

The movie was based on a true story about a team from Soviet Union. I think Dynamo Kyiv.

If I was to remake "Victory", the prison team will be the soviet teams. The players would be international stars acting as Ukrainian players. Jancker will still play a prison guard.

 

You mean the "Death" Match between Dynamo and the Nazis?

 

Mathis should be in the movie. At the end (after scoring the winning goal) instead of running towards freedom with all the other players he runs toward the German guards, lifts up his shirts and screams: "Who's fat now?"

 

Yes....

 

About the "Death Match" -- read Dynamo : Triumph and Tragedy in Nazi-Occupied Kiev by Andy Dougan

Yes, the Dynamo "Death Match" was the inspiration for Victory, but the Death Match is more myth than fact. In reality, players from Dynamo and other Kiev clubs formed a team called "Start" that played a series of games during the Nazi occupation. One of the teams was a team made up of anti-communist "nationalist" Ukranians. The rest of the games were against teams made up of Germans and other Axis troops occupying Kiev.

Start won all the games. The last two games were against "Flakelf" (anti-aircraft 11). Start won both games. After the second game, the games ceased.

Several of the Dynamo members were then called into to meetings with the Gestapo. It is unclear if they were called in due to the German's embarrassment in losing, or the fact that, technically, the Dynamo players were members of the Soviet secret police. ("Dynamo" was the usual name for police sports clubs, although only one member of the team was really an NKVD man, most of the rest were somewhat ambivilent about the Soviet system and just wanted to play soccer)

Four members of the team never returned from the Gestapo meetings -- they were executed.

 

I'll try to find a link, but now they believe that there were no executions, at least not immediately. Death Match was just propaganda fabricated by the Soviet government and those who survived the Nazi occupation were driven underground to preserve the myth. There were players from the final match who were killed by the Nazis, but not because of the match.

 

But Hollywood can still make it into a heroic epic. the same players would be perscuted by Stalin on the movie version.

 

I disagree that just because a movie is made about soccer, it will be bad. I do agree that "Victory" was terrible. Calling it a B movie would be a compliment.

The recent "Bend it Like Beckham" was much better, although I have a problem with movies that wrap up every loose end, and every plot line ends up in a happy ending. But, oh well. It was still a better class of movie, more like "Bull Durham" was for baseball.

robincd is right, though. If someone makes another soccer movie, please make a new one. Forget about lame unrealistic Hogan's Hero's type movies. What about that French semi-pro team a few years ago that nearly won their national cup tournment? Or rather than a movie about the best players (BILB), how about a movie about players not quite good enough? People would connect more with a player like that since most of us have faced that situation ourselves, not just in soccer.

If another soccer movie is going to be any good, you've got to start with a good story. Any other ideas?

 

Mountainia, you brought up two very good sports films, Bull Durham and Bend It Like Beckham, and the thing that the two have in common is that neither film is really about sports.
Bull Durham is about the relationship between a girl and two guys, with baseball as the common thread between the three. Bend It Like Beckham is about a girl who is forced to choose between her career and her family, with soccer providing an intersection between her new and old lives.

Basically, if you try to make a "sports movie", you are destined to fail. If you have a story that happens to revolve around sports, then you have a much better chance of having a movie that doesn't suck.

 

"Miracle of Castille di Sangro". I didn't really like the book that much, but it could quailfy as the basis for a movie. Its a true story about a little regional league team that made it all the way to Serie B.