United Passions

If your organisation is rotten to the core, harming something billions around the world love, what do you do?

Well, like any shady regime, you pump out propaganda. The trouble is, in this case everyone is well aware of FIFA's corruption, which makes this film not just poor cinema but unintentionally hilarious with great lines like, "Being president of Fifa will bring no glory, no money!"or, when Blatter is introduced with, ""he is apparently good at finding money" (in brown envelopes, we presume).

Like Nicolas Cage winding up in Left Behind, it's baffling how actor of the calibre of Tim Roth, Sam Neil and Gerard Depardieu. I guess none of them are football fans.

"On June 5, 2015, the film made its North American premiere at 10 movie theaters in New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Washington D. C., Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia. It grossed $319."

The above quote is from the IMDB trivia section on this film. Additionally, the film ended up losing pretty much all the money spent to make it! But, at the same time, the film is reasonably entertaining and features a pretty amazing cast, such as Gerard Depardieu, Tim Roth and Sam Neill. It also features some nice scenes of Paris circa 1930 as well as come great location shots. So what is the problem with this movie?

Well, the problem is that the film is a tribute to the wonderfulness of FIFA, the international body that governs and oversees football (soccer to us Americans). So why is this a problem? Well, the film came out just after FIFA and its leaders were embroiled in a scandal and arrests were made for bribery and more! So, it's not too surprising that revenues were down for the film. But the problem goes much deeper than this. Apparently most of the cost to make the film was actually provided by FIFA...making this essentially a propaganda film...probably made to try to distract the public from FIFA's legal troubles. And, the public seems to have realized this and they stayed away from the movie in droves! It also didn't help that the film not only talks about the early days of FIFA and the first World Cup but then jumps ahead to today...extolling FIFA's virtues but NEVER seriously addressing the scandals...many of which had broken well before the film debuted! And, sadly, some of the folks the film seems to applaud are those who were later sanctioned by FIFA for fraud.

If you completely ignore the propaganda aspects of the movie, I must admit that it's reasonably entertaining...though a bit sterile and uninvolving. It really lacks heart and warmth and the characters seem more like caricatures much of the time. But purely for the look of the film and SOME of the acting, I'm giving it a 3. It's not all that good and is an apparent attempt to distract the public...but it's not 100% bad as you watch the movie.

Why on earth was this film ever made? Who did they think would care? Apparently 90% of the budget was supplied by FIFA, which just leaves me wondering who the hell put up the other 10%.

By turns hilarious and nauseating, this shining great turd of a self-congratulatory vanity project is so ridiculous that if someone had told me it was a parody, I would have believed them. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to hurt members of your own family just to give you an excuse to stop watching.

It tells the 'story' of those unsung heroes of the world, FOOTBALL FAT CATS. Who, apparently, are all saints. Why? Just because. Don't argue. And they're ENTITLED to luxury goddammit, because they're making dreams come true. It just so happens that the dreams are their own, and those dreams consist of drinking champagne and private jets and staying in luxury hotels - yes, in a multi-million dollar movie starring famous and respected actors, this film literally has the cheek to include not one, but many lines of dialogue attempting to justify football officials indulging themselves.

Sepp Blatter, cast as a sort of modern day crusader (presumably by himself, I can't imagine why anyone else would have), played by Tim Roth, is given close-ups and swelling emotional incidental music as if he is some kind of hero, but nobody, least of all the filmmakers, seems to have any idea why.

It's honestly like a propaganda film biography of el presidente designed to encourage the cult of personality in some tinpot banana republic. ('Look, he pays the wages out of his own pocket when all others around him are corrupt! He is such a man of the people that he knows the cleaning lady's name!')

It ends up just being bizarre, and you feel sorry for pretty much everyone involved with it. Also, weirdly, this film portrays all English people as racist, sexist, stuck-up tossers. Why? Is it coz they wouldn't join FIFA's gentleman's club 100 years ago? Seems a little petty.

You know all those great sports movies about the underdogs and their fight to overcome incredible odds and still win? Yeah, this movie isn't one of those. It's a movie by a sports organization full of shady people about how not shady they are. There, it's like you just watched it.

FIFA has full reigns of this production and used it to make themselves seem like the bestest people in the world, which sounds ridiculous considering all of the scandals they are involved in. As previous reviewers have said, this smells a lot like propaganda. I guess you could enjoy it if you either 1. are a desperate fan boy/girl of anything related to football, or 2. an employee of FIFA contractually obligated to like it.

As a final note, you know a movie is bad when the IMDb tag line sounds sarcastic.

United Passions is a glorified corporate pat on the back made by FIFA that masquerades as a movie.

It has attracted stars such as Gerard Depardieu and Tim Roth.

The story is thin as it traces the rise of FIFA from characters such as Carl Hirschmann and Robert Guérin who were involved in its creation. The idea laughed out by the snooty British who had a more colonial and chauvinistic attitude to football.

Under Jules Rimet (Gerard Dépardieu) the third president of FIFA, the notion was put forward for holding the World Cup tournament, first held in Uruguay. The decision to hold in Italy under fascist Mussolini attracted critics.

João Havelange (Sam Neill) cultivated supported from Africa and Asia, attracted corporate sponsorship and boosted FIFA's coffers. Treating FIFA as his own personal fiefdom with constant allegations of and financial corruption under his watch.

Sepp Blatter (Tim Roth) is the embattled successor of Havelange. Determined to broaden football to a truly global sport played in all continents and by allsexes and ages. The final scene is South Africa being chosen to hold the 2010 World Cup.

Of course by the time the film was released, Blatter and other FIFA bigwigs had faced arrest for bribery and money laundering. Decades if financial corruption had come home to roost and there was nothing this film could do to whitewash it.

The film is technically well made but it is all rather pointless. Some British film critics were hard on the movie, the Brits who claim to have invented football appear as caricatures and FIFA did has not selected England as a World Cup venue since 1966.

Stanley Rous the British head of FIFA who preceded Havelange was lightly dealt with in my opinion. His regime bent over backwards trying to include apartheid South Africa in FIFA and in the World Cup. You can see how Havelange easily played him by courting black Africa.