United Passions (2014)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I've seen all sorts of terrible stuff in my lifetime. Gross-out comedies without the comedy, sickeningly cliché romantic movies, and unintentionally hilarious flops. But this tops them all. This is not only bad, it's fury-inducing.If your like me, you probably want to watch it because you know it's bad and are hoping to get some laughs out of it. Go watch Flash Gordon instead, because while there are some of those funny moments in here, there is also plenty of bad where there is no comedic value.They make the people who run FIFA seem like heroes. I'll give you one example of a hilarious scene where the FIFA president and his daughter give a speech towards the most cliché pompous and prejudiced British guy. By the way, every single British person in this acts like a Bond villain. Even Sepp Blatter, whose known for rigging votes and for saying women should wear tighter uniforms, stands against corruption and sexism in this film! Maybe I would believe this film's message if any of the actors cared. Okay, I wouldn't, but I have to point out how bad their performances are. They even hired a Irish actor who made no attempt to hide his accent to play a Brazilian! The script is the worst one ever written, none of the scenes are connected. In one scene, FIFA is about to go bankrupt, and in the next, they're meeting in a nice hotel and have no financial woes. Even the infamous "Uruguay vs. Brazil" game seems absolutely meaningless in this. You think they'd want to really show the 'struggles' of FIFA, but they just rush through everything.Garbage.

I had the chance to see this film at the film de palma in Harringate multicomplex in Birmingham. Having been a football fan for over 27 years i was blessed to be able to see the true events surrounding the intriguing story of the organization FIFA. Tim Roth is truly impressive as Seph Blatter and should be up for an Oscar, his portrayal of the well renowned President brought a tear to my eye, his scathing criticism concerning FIFA out bidding the tiddlywink championships based in the Ganges set my pulse racing. Also Sam Neil puts in a fine performance playing Joao Havelange, his first lines were mind blowing, I must also give credit to the camera team and make up artist, who must of been slightly inebriated during the making of this film. The best part must be when Joan Of Arc reveals herself to really be the reincarnation of Sir Matt Busby, he of Manchester United fame. If you only see one film this year then obviously you don't get out much.

I've marked my review as "contains spoiler", because when I mention that FIFA people use "good morning" greeting formula when they meet in the morning, I've just revealed the 50% of the story.A summary which tells that "FIFA often gets into financial trouble" and "they organize world cups" or "good morning", is not only a spoiler, but a word-by-word transcript of the film. We don't get any details about the financial troubles, they just say "we have serious financial troubles" with sad or angry tone. And they don't tire us what happened then. They even don't bore us with outlining the efforts of organizing a world cup. There're no detailed dialogs, no detailed intentions, no detailed actions. Men are sitting around a table and talking summary-language, avoiding details or any factual data. No numbers were harmed, not even used during the making of the film, with the exception of the capacity of the Uruguay stadium (200k) and period of world cups (4y). No action, no drama. The most surprising twists in the story are results of the voting about FIFA president, and the location of the next world cup. Behind a long table. Men sitting. Talking summary-language. No data.There are a few soccer scenes in the film, mostly some short flash-ups from actual world cup finals.Also, the film is quite mannered. Scene: FIFA managers traveling with boat to America. The photographer is preparing to take a shot of them, meanwhile shouting: "Don' forget, this is a historical moment!" If I would tell the story to one of my friend, I'd be in trouble, because there is no storyline, there's nothing. FIFA has nothing to tell. FIFA has lot to conceal.

A FIFA financed movie about the history of the FIFA. It is at least quite unusual to have a sports movie that is not about sportsmen but about sports administrators (Moneyball is the only one that comes to my mind). Tim Roth plays FIFA president Sepp Blatter as a honest, efficient if tough administrator (you really need to have a very huge ego to finance a movie where you are the hero, though, as one friend told me, at least Blatter had the sense not to hire Brad Pitt to play himself). The production values are fine, which is to be expected given the reported budget of almost 30 million dollars. Not a great film obviously, but not as bad as expected. It is quite entertaining if naturally very one sided. With Gerard Depardieu (in an enjoyable performance) and Sam Reilly as former FIFA presidents Jules Rimet and Joao Havelange and Thomas Kretschmann as Horst Dassler, head of sports apparel giant Adidas. Amusingly, the movie has a quite crude anti– English tone: every English character in the movie looks bad (England and the other British sides initially refused to join FIFA, seeing it as an upstart organization).