‘I’m a winner… just like Roy…’
When I first heard that there was going to be a feature film produced about Roy Keane abandoning the Irish World Cup squad in 2022, my first response was to question why such a thing needs to exist. Sure, this was a seismic event in the world of Irish football, but was it significant enough to justify a full feature film? I wasn’t sure then, and despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of watching Saipan (in a packed cinema no less), I’m still not convinced that this couldn’t have been a one-hour, made-for-TV drama…
Roy Keane (Eanna Hardwicke) arrives in Saipan for the 2022 World Cup ready to work. Upon arrival, however, he is met with a training camp that includes an unplayable pitch, no water bottles, poor quality catering and no footballs. Keane looks to Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan), his manager, for support, but feels let down by the response that he receives. The ensuing fallout sees Keane threaten to leave the camp altogether – a possibility that has the suits from the FAI scrambling.
Writer Paul Fraser (Dead Man’s Shoes) does a good job of carving out 90 minutes’ worth of story from what is essentially an elevator pitch. His screenplay is consistently funny and is effective in explaining to the layperson why this was such a notable event in modern Irish history (whilst never losing sight of how ridiculously hysterical the tone of some of the reporting on this event was). Directing duo Lisa Barros D’Sa & Glenn Leyburn manage to make Belfast and County Louth pass for the eponymous island of Saipan, and the footage of people playing football, so often terrible in films about football, is at least not obtrusively bad here.
None of this would matter without the performances, however. This is essentially a two-hander with Coogan, an incredibly gifted mimic, bringing a warmth and humanity to McCarthy and Hardwicke effectively capturing Keane’s cold defiance (although his portrayal is a little too humourless for my taste – Keane’s sense of humour is dry but he is undoubtedly a very funny man). The two are kept apart for much of the film, with Coogan often shown laughing and joking with his squad while Hardwicke simmers and frets in his claustrophobic hotel room (complete with broken air conditioning), but when they do butt heads, particularly in the climactic scene in a grubby hotel ballroom, sparks genuinely fly. That final confrontation, in a film which is so often light-hearted, is genuinely tough to watch, evoking some of Fraser’s gritty work with Shane Meadows, and the film struggles to maintain that level of emotional resonance in its final moments.
Saipan is entertaining throughout, and football fans of my generation will lap it up, but its validity as a 90-minute feature film is still very much up for debate.
