Dorathen Better Late Then Never

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

g-white723 The is a good film about probably the biggest upset in football history - certainly it is viewed that way in the UK. In 1950 England's football team was regarded as the number one team in the world. They had never competed in the World Cup because they viewed it as beneath them in some way (as did the other British teams). England had never been defeated by foreign (non British) opposition on home soil, so they were a tad arrogant.This is an interesting film about football history. The game very much in its infancy in America, starts in St. Louis where the manager scouts a set of amateur players to play for the national team. Gerard Butler plays the goal keeper Frank Borghi, which in a bad team, turns out to be the hero, and Wes Bentley plays team captain Walter Bahr. Interestingly the team captain had a much bigger role than they have today. He was involved in team selection and tactics. The Americans realise early on they are likely to get a hiding from the more experienced professional teams, but that is where the emotion of the film comes in as the team bond around the hero goal keeper and team captain. Probably because this is a really embarrassing moment in England's football history, and America's ambivalence towards the game, explains why it has taken 60 odd years for this story to come to the big screen. The period details, and sports action looked authentic and the big finale is a highlights coverage of the famous game. The acting is fine all round. As a football fan this is an entertaining and informative film. I've only ever seen black and photographs of the this game so it great to see a film which fills in the full story. 8/10.

margo3883 Good Heavens...! I just saw it - after several previous attempts that had failed- and was SO disappointed by the result. What was it ? Cause it certainly couldn't have passed as a film. I admit i had to check the director's name and his previous filmography cause i couldn't believe this thing had even a director. Being an European i'm pretty aware about football, certainly i'm not the most ardent fan, yet i do watch football games and i enjoyed VERY much another film of 1981 called "Victory" and one of 1997 "Fever Pitch"- both being quite football centered. In fact "Victory" is in my top 10 movies of all times. However this "Miracle Game" movie was VERY poor ( and this can be received as an euphimism) -especially in directing. It was not lack of actors or plot, yet the script - perhaps- and the directing blew the whole thing to the air.As for the message of the story.....let's not take this subject. It's too much biased, constantly portraying England/English as arrogant and snob while all the time the movie is bursting out with US pride and smug. It's getting irritating at the end. It's like the other players were not playing for their nations as well, since we know that national teams - especially back in '50s- were pretty much non professional and most of all, everyone in every country was making the effort for their country above all. Too pity for at least three actors - Gerard Butler and the Mandylor brothers who were deserving better than this catastrophe.

hall895 The story of the 1950 United States World Cup soccer team's stunning upset victory over England is one which has been begging to be told for years. One of the great sports underdog stories of all time and hardly anyone knows a thing about it. Many younger American soccer fans don't even know it happened. Finally, this movie has come along to shed some well-deserved light on those players who toiled mostly in anonymity and whose achievements seemed lost in the dustbin of history. It is wonderful that this movie was made. You just wish the movie had been made better. The Game of Their Lives or The Miracle Match or whatever they're calling it these days never quite hits the heights. It tells a story which needed to be told. It just doesn't tell it in an entertaining enough way.This movie is cut from the tried and true sports underdog movie mold (Hoosiers, Rocky, Rudy and so on) but it never has the same sense of energy which drove those films forward. While those films had a certain zest to them as they built towards a thrilling conclusion this film just kind of slogs along. It's not nearly as engrossing as it could have, and given the great story they had to work with, probably should have been. The fact that certain details of history have been twisted and changed to try to make things seem more dramatic than they actually were doesn't help either. A misguided attempt to create a "villain" on the English team also falls flat. It seems the filmmakers were afraid to allow this story to speak for itself and were determined to spice it up with some artificial drama. The fake drama doesn't work and we're not left with enough real drama either.This is not to say that The Game of Their Lives (or The Miracle Match or whatever) is a bad movie. It's OK. You just get the sense that this story deserved a movie which is better than just OK. The acting is fine with Gerard Butler and Wes Bentley the key figures in a cast which otherwise is made up of mostly unknowns with the exception of, oh sweet irony, Englishman Patrick Stewart as the American soccer reporter who serves as the film's narrator while relishing the memory of the English defeat. The visuals are very good and the soccer scenes quite well done. But what's lacking is drama. The film never really grabs you, from the "getting to know you" phase as we meet the players all the way through the "thrilling" climax which comes off as rather ordinary. And what the U.S. team achieved in Brazil in 1950 was anything but ordinary. Unfortunately the full impact of what those men accomplished and who those men really were doesn't come across in this film. And that's a shame.

daviddavidlim86 this is a good movie for football fans to watch just before the biggest show in football kicks off, i.e. the 2006 World Cup.. no stars in this movie apart from Patrick Stewart but it bodes p well.. v similar to World's Fastest Indian if not as good but it does give ya a glimpse of the perceptions of football in those days when England still considered themselves to be the masters of the game they invented..in fact, the original result hardly made headlines back in England.. the English just didn't care about the World Cup until 1962, the last tournament before they would host it.. to the English, the World Cup was a joke as they still thought themselves to be the undisputed World Champions of the world..of course, history tells us that England has only won the World Cup once when they were hosts in 1966 with a team as talented but more adept to the changes in world football than the one which lost to the USA in 1950.. as for the USA, they only made the World Cup again in 1990 before they hosted the tournament in 1994..in the movie there is no mention about how the Americans had to qualify for the World Cup beating the likes of Guatemala and Mexico, nor about how they had to beat Spain to progress to the second round of the tournament.. but i guess the one result that everyone remembers is that game against England in beautiful Belo Horizonte and how they beat the team that called themselves the World Champions before a ball had been kicked.hopefully in a couple of years time, they might make a movie about another shock win by the Americans at a World Cup tournament 52 years later, when they beat a Portugal team full of stars 3-2..