United Passions (2014) Reviews

• This is propaganda. DON'T PAY TO SEE THIS!

  marcofrias2014-07-02

  English is not my first language but I will give it a try. I went to see this for free today on the premiere in Portugal, I wasn't expecting much because I saw the IMDb score, and YouTube comments saying it was propaganda, I honestly taught everybody was overreacting and went to see it with an open-mind, besides that I love Tim Roth with all my heart. Oh boy was I wrong, the movie is 2 hours of showing FIFA like martyrs that went against the world for football, even when they almost admit they were corrupt with was just for the greater good - football, showing that FIFA don't care about money, the only money they need is for Football, but for me the most f*cking shocking part was Tim Roth's role - Joseph Blatter. They show him like he was the Mahatma Gandhi of Football , if that sounds offensive it's because it is. I isn't subtle it's just plan offensive, this is as low as the propaganda movies Hitler used to convince kids joining the Nazis. On the bright side the movie lacks so much subtlety that it's almost hilarious. Speaking on the technical side, the sets and clothing are nice, not great but nice, everything else is terrible, terrible directing, terrible editing, generic music that sounds like it was taken from a free sound archive, disgusting color grading. It seems like they spend every dollar on the main cast, that I like but they couldn't save this movie. Nothing could. It's depressing to see FIFA resort to this, I don't know if using the same strategy that Hitler used will make people see them in good eyes. For me I lost the little respect I still had for organization.

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• Awful, Terrible, Avoid

  martyncymro2014-07-10

  A film about FIFA, an organisation which is renowned for corruption and skulduggery, finances a film about itself. This should get the alarm bells sounding immediately. The basic plot is simple, football commences as a global sport, FIFA creates itself to manage this new international phenomenon. FIFA is amazing. The end. This is a film about an organisation in which corruption is rife, which pays no taxes, yet has 'billions' in its bank accounts, and which forces countries which win the bidding to host the World Cup to their change laws. FIFA were even allowed to edit the script to their choosing. If you like watching propaganda, then this is the film for you. Otherwise, I suggest that it is given a wide birth. It's very strange that the one person here who has written a 10 star review only joined IMDb 2 weeks ago and must have done just to write a heavily biased review for this film.

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• no...just no

  dune_30012015-03-13

  You know all those great sports movies about the underdogs and their fight to overcome incredible odds and still win? Yeah, this movie isn't one of those. It's a movie by a sports organization full of shady people about how not shady they are. There, it's like you just watched it. FIFA has full reigns of this production and used it to make themselves seem like the bestest people in the world, which sounds ridiculous considering all of the scandals they are involved in. As previous reviewers have said, this smells a lot like propaganda. I guess you could enjoy it if you either 1. are a desperate fan boy/girl of anything related to football, or 2. an employee of FIFA contractually obligated to like it. As a final note, you know a movie is bad when the IMDb tag line sounds sarcastic.

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• Breathtakingly awful propaganda from the Mafia that killed football

  daviddesignbristol2015-06-04

  If your organisation is rotten to the core, harming something billions around the world love, what do you do? Well, like any shady regime, you pump out propaganda. The trouble is, in this case everyone is well aware of FIFA's corruption, which makes this film not just poor cinema but unintentionally hilarious with great lines like, "Being president of Fifa will bring no glory, no money!"or, when Blatter is introduced with, ""he is apparently good at finding money" (in brown envelopes, we presume). Like Nicolas Cage winding up in Left Behind, it's baffling how actor of the calibre of Tim Roth, Sam Neil and Gerard Depardieu. I guess none of them are football fans.

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• That it is revisionist doesn't make it awful per se, but doing so in such a clumsy and obvious fashion, and with no narrative to distract, makes for a poor film

  bob the moo2014-11-28

  Like many others, if I am honest, I decided to watch this film not with the thought of "this might be good" but rather "this might be awful". I did try as much as I could to put it to one side, but with FIFA it is really hard to give them the benefit of the doubt, and indeed, with the accusations about the ethics report (clearing them totally of any wrong-doing regarding Qatar), it is difficult to come to the film just keen to meet it on an open field with no preconceptions. It was additionally hard to put the ethics report and the many other terrible things they do out of my mind, when the film kept reminding me that really it was just yet another in a long line of spin, defiance, arrogance, and being frankly up themselves. It is technically well made; the crowd effects green-screen are the only obvious weak spot in the production values that are obvious, and otherwise it seems that at least those technical people have been able to make the film look and sound as it should. So if your own requirement is that the cinematography, sound, location management, and other such things are good, then this film will please you. Unfortunately this is not where most viewers will have their issues. Much bile has been directed at the cast for taking part, but the real blame must be laid at the writer Deflino and the writer/ director Auburtin because fundamentally the film is a mess in terms of broad narrative and specific dialogue. Perhaps they had other forces at play with their drafts, but whatever happened the film is really something to behold. Starting with the plot, there is no central driving force to the film apart from simply the passage of time. The ending of the film is Blatter getting re-elected and the 2010 world cup going to South Africa; why? Why is this the end? Indeed what was the plot? It trudges through history with little drama, little interest, and really nothing to make you watch apart from how ham-fisted so much of it is. There is really no plot here – just a series of events that occur, few of them in any way interesting. But if it were only this, perhaps it would be okay – but it is not. Looking at the film is regard to specific scenes or dialogue what we get is a film trying to brush away the perception of FIFA – even if it means making the film version of themselves be in stark contrast to the reality. It is clear whoever added such things knew the public accusations very well, and the film tackles them throughout – but does so in the most clumsy and obvious manner. The unrelated football match that we keep flashing to is the main thing – happy multi-cultural children playing the game for love, with a key focus on the female player. We also get Rimet quick to correct a man being racist and sexist, or Blatter tackling those within FIFA who appear to be corrupt. My personal favorite is the line said by Blatter "we should be concentrating on the women's game"; this made in rewind in disbelief that such a line would be written when really the most well-known position he has ever taken on that is that they should wear more feminine garb – particularly "tighter shorts for example". The film seems to have lots of this sort of revisionism when it comes to Blatter – even making a point of having a scene where he says hello to a cleaner by name. There is lots of this clumsiness in revisionist history and point scoring; the British in particular are mocked for really no narrative reason. To be fair to the film, the role of sponsorship, money, and internal politics is covered, but it is not explored so much as just mentioned, and what really sticks in the mind is what isn't covered or what appears to be being spun. The cast get paid and go home – little else can be said. Depardieu and Roth are both good actors, so for them to stand in front of a camera and say words is not bother – as such they do functional jobs, but looking at their effort it is pretty clear that this was their version of Michael Caine's Jaws IV ("I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific"). Sam Neill is wonderfully bad in it – despite playing a Brazilian, he cannot get rid of his Peaky Blinders Northern Irish accent, and as result he has bits of that coming in all the time – along with loads of other accents that don't work either. Supporting cast is roundly so-so – nobody is terrible, it is just they have nothing to do, and even the best of them cannot sell this script. United Passions is not as terrible as many viewers would have liked it to have been – but it is really poor nonetheless. There is really no narrative thread worth mentioning, but worse than this is the terrible attempts to rewrite even recent history, with scenes and lines of dialogue that have so clearly been dropped in for no other purpose than to pretend that the opposite is not true (which of course it is). The film's only actual purpose could be argued to be that it stands as testament to FIFA's self-indulgent arrogance – however even on that front there are so many other, better examples of this, that really even for that one does not need this dry wreck of a film.

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