G'olé!

I watched this repeatedly on HBO as a kid. Still have the VHS tape I used to record it. As an American kid playing soccer in the 1980's, this was the only coverage of the World Cup I ever saw. The beauty of this film made me fall in love with the international game, and I still feel giddy ever four years when the World Cup is played.

This is not your traditional highlight video. Rather, it's a film that brings out the passion and heartbreak that makes football what it is. Mix the poetic narration of Sean Connery with field-level action shots and it is impossible to not get caught up the stories. Brazil - maybe the greatest team to never win it with their throngs of fans. Italy - The controversial Paolo Rossi with 6 goals in three games (and the Tardelli goal...greatest celebration of all time). Argentina - The young Diego Maradona's inauspicious World Cup debut. The list continues...

Highly recommend for any football fan.

The World Cup is a competition that occurs once every four years. As the name of this competition entails, the best soccer teams in the "World" get the opportunity to prove themselves as the very best on the planet. This is not a "highlight" film as much as it is a glimpse inside many cultures of the world and the sport that brings them all together.

You see it all! Two very different, and yet ironic, beginnings of young careers: Maradona's first World Cup for Argentina and the young Norman Whiteside of Northern Ireland. The perennial greats: Italy, West Germany, Brazil and not to mention the great Michel Platini of France. The wacky and weird: Kuwait, and how the Sheikh stops a match! The long-shots: Cameroon and their musical culture, as well as New Zealand and their desire simply to stay alive.

The commentary by Sean Connery is brilliant and poetic once intermingled with the action and scenic views of the host country, Spain, as well as the spectators who let themselves go while cheering on their own countries.

For anyone who enjoyed this film, you must absolutely also see the highlight film of the 1992 European Championship (in Sweden) - exhilarating soccer from beginning to end and quite possibly on of the best ever semi-final matches, as well as one of the most dramatic final matches of all time.

World Cup feature films are utterly redundant these days - FIFA prefers to release celebratory DVDs and goal collections. But back before the advent of VCR and DVD, we had a wonderful collection of full length movies documenting every kick and angle of each tournament, just as long as it matched the incredibly idiosyncratic direction the 'director' decided to lead us in.

G'ole covers the 1982 tournament in Spain which was eventually won by Italy. The problem is that instead of showing the matches as you might see them on TV or even on an NFL film , the FIFA movies tended to focus on bizarre side attractions and treat their subject matter as if it was the most important event on Earth. This is were Sean Connery takes his cue for a very self-important commentary, full of hyperbole and sheer nonsense.

Much of the football action follows key individuals, and rarely allows the viewer a side on shot typical of TV football. Instead we see a lot of feet, a lot of lingering facial expressions, and (just occasionally) some sheer poetry.

Probably the best moment comes when Marco Tardelli has just scored Italy's second, contest-killing goal in the final against West Germany. Tardelli's extravagant celebration is rightly famous, but in G'ole we follow his every movement over 30 or so seconds in glorious slow motion, seeing just what it feels like to become the biggest hero in your country. That moment alone makes you like the film.

Highlights? Well, we get to see the New Zealand coach swear at his players for five minutes (apparently it was a half-time pep talk), get lingering shots of topless Spanish women (to exemplify Connery's suggestion that Spain is some sort of beach Utopia) and get intimate with the Scania team coaches! All 18 wheels of these gas-guzzling beasts are highlighted throughout, driving slowly and pointlessly down country lanes. I'm pretty sure that no other film in the IMDB database can boast that.