Saipan Review
For football fans, Saipan means just one thing. The 2002 FIFA World Cup. The Western Pacific island was just one of the venues for the South Korea/Japan hosted finals, as well as home to the Republic of Ireland team. But the football itself came close to being overshadowed by the head to head confrontation between the two giants of the Republic of Ireland team, manager Mick McCarthy and captain Roy Keane. Putting that showdown in the spotlight makes Saipan so much more than a football movie.
Showing a side of the game that is anything but beautiful, the story launches two men with diametrically opposed personalities on the fast track to lighting the touchpaper. So much was riding on the team’s results in the World Cup: it was only the third time they’d reached the finals and that in itself was enough to grip the nation, but what caught the imagination of the sporting world and the media was the antagonism between McCarthy (Steve Coogan) and Keane (Eanna Hardwicke). To the outside world, this was a feud about sporting standards – increased professionalism versus a more easy going approach, which was on the wane – but beneath it lay mutual rivalry and contempt, all of which fuelled what has since become one of the most infamous and public fallings-out in the history of any sport.
It was perfect fodder for the tabloids and they absolutely feasted on it. There was no way they’d be able to resist a row that started with a plate of cheese sandwiches, which becomes the film’s running gag. But Saipan should have a permanent place on any management course, because it’s an instance of office politics meeting the football pitch. The two men are under the behaviour spotlight that goes with being in the finals, the pressure piles on and everybody can see the eruption coming. McCarthy is reluctant to acknowledge Keane’s status within the team, while the dour faced captain is sceptical of the manager’s approach and decision making and even less than enamoured of the excesses of the Football Association of Ireland.
Inevitably, the audience’s eyes are on Keane, as played by Hardwicke, if only to see if he’s as uncompromising as his older, TV pundit self. The short answer is yes. He totally nails the role: he shoots straight from the hip, is totally convinced that he’s right about everything and makes no bones about how he feels about McCarthy. And there are times when you find yourself agreeing with what he’s saying, but the way he says it and his behaviour are incendiary. Casting Coogan as McCarthy is unexpected. He doesn’t carry himself like an athlete, unlike the McCarthy that we see in the film’s archive footage. Aside from that, he’s a strong choice, even if he does find himself playing second fiddle to the lesser-known Hardwicke. It all comes together in a blistering, no holds barred confrontation, the perfect culmination to a lean, tight film which is full of tension. And that’s almost a description of Keane himself.
The film was released earlier this month in Ireland, but we’ve still yet to hear whether Keane or McCarthy have seen it or how they reacted. The closest we’ve come is loaded with irony. When Saipan was announced, Keane was reported as joking he’d heard about it and thought Hugh Jackman would be playing him. Before filming started, McCarthy apparently chatted to Coogan on the phone and was quoted as saying he’d been expecting to speak to George Clooney. It’s astonishing that such similar answers should come from two men who could agree about nothing. And the same two men refusing to give an inch is a desperately sad sight. An inch is all it would have taken. We can all learn from that.
★★★★
Related Post: Interview with directors, Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn
In cinemas from January 23rd / Eanna Hardwicke, Steve Coogan, Alice Lowe, Jamie Beamish, Alex Murphy, Harriet Cains and Peter McDonald / Dirs: Glenn Leyburn, Lisa Barros D’Sa / Vertigo Releasing / 15
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