‘This frigging game is ruining my life...’
When I was a kid, my babysitter introduced me to loads of wonderful films from The Karate Kid to Short Circuit to the Rocky franchise. This cinematic education shaped my taste going forward and perhaps goes some way to explain why I’m still so obsessed with ’80s and ’90s cinema. One of the less prestigious films I encountered at this time was John Huston’s Escape to Victory. I was probably around 7 or 8 years old at the time, and I remember thinking that it was probably the greatest piece of art ever produced by another human. The man from The Muppet Christmas Carol, and the man from Rocky AND Pele? What black magic is this? This experience was so seismic in fact that I never went back to Escape to Victory because I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memory of it. And while it’s perhaps not as potent as I remembered it being as a kid, it’s still a great time at the movies…
Captain John Colby (Michael Caine) leads a football team of Allied POWs in WWII against a German team led by Major Karl von Steiner (Max von Sydow) of the German army. The Allied team features Sylvester Stallone as goalkeeper Captain Robert Hatch, Pele as Corporal Luis Fernandez and Bobby Moore as team captain Terry Brady. There are also a bunch of Ipswich Town players milling about. I’m fairly sure this is the only time tough-tackling centre back John Wark found himself working under a director with 14 Oscar nominations.
As with most films about football, this one is absolutely preposterous, obviously. The premise makes no real sense; at one point they break the goalkeeper’s arm to allow Stallone to join the team rather than just allowing the original keeper the opportunity to feign an injury. There is a long section that involves Stallone meeting up with the French resistance, which feels so po-faced and dull compared to the rest of the film that it’s baffling it was included at all. The football scenes are stylised but still a joy to behold and more authentic than loads of other football films. But what can’t be denied is that this is dazzlingly entertaining. Bill Conti’s (composer of the Rocky theme) score brings an air of gravitas to the proceedings. It’s just all wonderfully light and heartwarming and satisfying in its predictability. You may think that a film that takes place mostly in a prisoner of war camp run by the most evil group of people that ever lived might be a little dark on occasion, but that is absolutely not the case. The POWs here seem to spend much of their time playing football, drinking tea and chatting in the sunshine. It looks positively spiffing.
Escape to Victory will never appeal to fans of logic, but it should be required viewing for anyone who loves football or sports films more generally. Probably the most purely entertaining football film ever made.
