To underline just how little I know about football, I had never even heard of the Saipan incident, which is how history describes the fallout between Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy during the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
It's not because I think I'm above football fandom or anything like that. I just never got into it. I admire the athleticism and the skill required to play as a team. I've even watched the occasional game as a part of the whole social experiment. But I never got the bug. I don't have a favorite team, and I couldn't name another player besides David Beckham, and that's only because he's pals with Deadpool.
But I understand anxiety. I understand having a chip on your shoulder. I know how trauma can make everything feel combative, and how even the things you love stop providing an escape when it clashes with personal grudges and ego.
In Saipan, football is the grand tapestry around these emotions. It happens in the extremities of all other drama, yet it's always there. When we're talking about football, we're really talking about our own failures. Just as we're talking about football when we're trying to say we're sorry.
Steve Coogan plays McCarthy with hangdog charm, the kind of "what can you do?" energy in people who are aware of both their limitations and the ambitions that exceed them. He does his best, as he so often says, and it's equal parts resignation as it is the truth.
Coogan is wonderful in the part. He's made a career of playing characters who are often confidently incorrect and out of their depth. Here, he's a anchor holding the team together, even as he's splitting apart at the seams. He has just as much of a dog in this fight as the rest, yet his background is weaponized against him at every turn. He's not smart, well-equipped, or Irish enough, depending on the situation.
But McCarthy is no saint, and Coogan subtly plays the part with a quiet loathing towards the entire system he desperately wants to be part of. He could just as easily rest as a family man and, in a way, be happy. But it wouldn't be the kind of happiness he chases in the game. It's a great, vulnerable performance from an actor who continues to surprise.
Likewise, Éanna Hardwicke is stellar as Keane, a hot-headed star of the field who can't stop his worse tendencies from sabotaging his future. Keane insists that it's all about the game for him, but we can sense how much of it is outrunning past demons, including those he now shares a team with. It's a complex part, one that has to reconcile with a lot of unspoken Irish history the film smartly doesn't dive too deeply into.
Hardwicke plays Keane as a man who is easy to admire for his skill, but equally easy to hate for his childish temper and hardheadedness. He's the kind of guy you want on the team against better judgement.
Saipan doesn't reveal more about these people than is necessary for this particular story to work. It has a bunch of inside banter about famous managers that flew over my head, but none of it is necessary to see the big picture. This is a smart film that understands that sports movies are only as entertaining as the people playing in them. We don't cheer for the ball, but the person kicking it.
By focusing on the sidelines of The Beautiful Game, Saipan reveals itself an accessible and universal story of regret and ambition that breaks free from the confines of the genre. It's a touching film that helped me understand the passion of this sport a little better.
