Manchester United: Beyond the Promised Land

This is a corporate promotion film masquerading as an in depth fly-on-the-wall documentary. Before I saw the film, the clips I saw were of either Roy Keane getting upset about losing a pub quiz and two leeds fans resentful of United's success. Two moments worth watching which last about 20 seconds.

The rest of the film revolves around, an Irishman in New York traveling to watch a game or some extremely boring dressing room footage and playing golf, all of which leads me to believe that most of the united team are even duller in real life than we thought they were.

Most of the film I was bored and sedate, but I was made livid by the glossing over of ManU's decision to pull out of the FA cup as holders, to go to some new tournament in Brazil (which they didn't win) to persuade FIFA to give the world cup to England (which they didn't). At the time it was huge news, that a team had for the first time opted out of the oldest cup competition in the world. The film gives us the corporate angle for withdrawal, none of the press reaction, and then off to Brazil. A couple of fans express chagrin, over this in the film but no anger, as it what actually happened.

For a documentary about a football team we see surprisingly little action. A handful of games are shown, with a couple of goals from them. From the outset we know that united will win the league because no other teams' games are shown. This in a film where 10 minutes are given over to a couple of vodafone executives being shown where their giant advertisement with be.