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Waste of time

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The film starts out in 1904 as Europe organizes FIFA. The English smugly refuse to join "the Frogs." The movie then jumps to 1924. In a need to create a World Cup it sells itself to Uruguay. Indeed the films jumps rather quickly as it shows us 106 years of history in 100 minutes. Characters are created to die. The only aging makeup was the graying of hair. FIFA appears to be in a constant state of "broke." It has lofty apolitical origins, yet becomes very political and in the end pretends to be the body for world peace. Being broke forced FIFA into the realm of corporate sponsors, who are subject to boycotts, who are swayed by world politics.When watching the film, it is best if one knows the world political theater of the last century as it plays an important background, but there is an assumption the viewer is well informed. The film features a quick symbolic subplot of kids playing football on a third world lot. As the game evolves so does the play on the field. I believe Pele was mentioned about three times. The movie includes some historical footage, but not much.Parental Guide: No F-bombs, sex, or nudity.

Where do I even begin with this movie? I guess I'll start with the cinematography. The camera remains in focus for most of the time and I'd say the authenticity of the players in the on set shots seemed convincing enough. Everything else was complete tripe.Let's just forget for a second that FIFA as an organization have numerous times over the course of their history proved to be heavily corrupted and excessively money greedy and their portrayal as saints is essentially down to the fact that FIFA funded this movie. Let's forget all the controversy and allegations Mr Blatter faced for match fixing, bribery and inappropriate conduct for a second and take this movie at face value. This movie is a boring drawn out muddled up tale about how everyone who likes FIFA is god himself and everyone who doesn't is a racist, misogynist. No really, even the subtly in the antagonists cant be found a single bit.That man that Rimet's daughter was talking to a good 20 minutes into the movie only had one scene and in that scene of course it is revealed that he can't fathom the "Negroes" playing the sport because he LITERALLY STATES THEY ARE TOO STUPID. WAY TO GO FOR SUBTLETY GUYS. Not to mention how the only real crutch in the entire movie are the people against FIFA, who I assume we're supposed to see as bad people, but in all seriousness, they voice a lot of opinions us the football loving general public share. Wilcox questions Blatter numerous times about money laundering and why Blatter felt the need to protect such corrupt officials. ARE WE MEANT TO HATE WILCOX FOR UPSETTING OUR 'PRECIOUS BLATTER? If anything I begin to sympathize with Wilcox much more than any other 'protagonist' in this confusing story.And if you think these harsh opinions were shared only by myself this film holds the record for the worst grossing film in US history on it's opening night, making a measly 980 dollars and overall losing the production company 26 million dollars. Even the man who played Blatter went online to apologize for his role as the infamous chairman. When you have actors literally going out of their own way to apologize for the disgrace of a movie they took part in, you know you've messed up.All in all this movie was doomed to fail from the start. A pointless 2 hour dare I say "movie" surrounding the creation and formation of FIFA doesn't even sound like a bad idea, but when the organization itself is funding this project, there's only one real direction it's gonna be heading in. Dry and stale acting and a script stuffed with ranting like dialogue made this movie experience for me and for many others. Shameful propaganda.

Before watching the title, I heard the many bad critic. I prepared for the worst: for a boring FIFA-propaganda. Fortunately it's not completely true.I saw it in a little cinema in East-Hungary in the evening, I was the only one in the house, so no one disturbed me. The first 45 minutes was pretty good, although it's maybe the lurdiest part of the film: it presents the first years and fights of FIFA, including the organizations of World Cups. After that there is only the justification of Havelange's and mainly Blatter's work: he is the good guy who saved the group and brought the soccer to all part of world. During its presentation i got fed up with the movie.Despite of the failures and weaknesses it might deserve a better rating than 3 stars. The reason of the low rating is obviously is the hatred what a lot of soccer fans feel toward FIFA, toward this corrupt criminal group. I do not reckon it as a very bad movie, but I like its falling. I only feel sorry for the actors who played well.By the way, I didn't get answer, why the 2022 WC will be held in Quatar...

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).