{"id":210140,"date":"2025-12-25T11:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T11:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/210140\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T11:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T11:29:09","slug":"the-likeability-of-eanna-hardwickes-roy-keane-makes-the-big-meltdown-all-the-more-shocking-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/210140\/","title":{"rendered":"The likeability of \u00c9anna Hardwicke\u2019s Roy Keane makes the big meltdown all the more shocking \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saipan <\/p>\n

\ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 <\/p>\n

Director: Lisa Barros D\u2019Sa, Glenn Leyburn<\/p>\n

Cert: 15A<\/p>\n

Starring: Steve Coogan, \u00c9anna Hardwicke, Jack Hickey, Harriet Cains, Niall McNamee, Alice Lowe, Alex Murphy<\/p>\n

Running Time: 1 hr 30 mins<\/p>\n

A tricky prospect, this. In the months since its premiere, at Toronto International Film Festival, Lisa Barros D\u2019Sa and Glenn Leyburn\u2019s take on the most infamous falling-out in Irish sporting history has caused a few overseas heads to be scratched. \u201cImagine if Michael Jordan or LeBron James decided not to play for Team USA,\u201d Gregory Ellwood ventured<\/a> in the Playlist. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Saipan the movie: Roy Keane-Mick McCarthy flashbacks too much for this traumatised fanOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He was not the only critic rushing to Wikipedia. Are there really the makings of a film in what, to the rest of the world, seems just a little local difficulty?<\/p>\n

On balance, yes. That significant portion of the Irish audience familiar with the dispute in 2002 between Roy Keane<\/a>, the volatile Republic of Ireland soccer captain, and Mick McCarthy<\/a>, the team\u2019s lugubrious manager, will find their nostalgia glands satisfactorily stimulated. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Saipan 20 years on: The inside story of the World Cup row that divided a nationOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But there is also universal drama in here. Working from a tidy script by Paul Fraser, a frequent collaborator with Shane Meadows, \u00c9anna Hardwicke<\/a>, as Keane, and Steve Coogan<\/a>, as McCarthy, develop rounded personalities that, though reminiscent of the originals, emerge as independent characters in a factional space.<\/p>\n

The unavoidable comparison is with Tom Hooper\u2019s The Damned United<\/a>, a tale of Brian Clough\u2019s unhappy spell at Leeds United, from 2009. Both films should appeal to committed soccer fans. But they will also connect with any office worker who has fallen out with a boss over the allocation of pencil sharpeners (or whatever).<\/p>\n

Does The Irish Times need to offer what Robbie Collin, in a positive review for the Daily Telegraph, called a \u201cpr\u00e9cis for the clueless (like me)\u201d? Maybe a few bullet points. Ireland make it to the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Keane deems the training camp on the island of Saipan unsatisfactory: bumpy pitch, unpalatable food, even a lack of footballs.<\/p>\n

The media pick up on the aggro. The midfielder eventually lets rip at McCarthy in a famously torrid team meeting, alleged snippets of which have entered vulgar vernacular.<\/p>\n

The film-makers have skilfully, and necessarily, conflated characters to provide a smoother narrative (and presumably satisfy m\u2019learned friends\u2019 legal concerns). Jamie Beamish, blustery and blazered, makes an oily bingo caller of the senior Ireland official. Fictionalised amalgams of the journalistic pack sharpen the antagonisms as a conflict becomes increasingly inevitable.<\/p>\n

It would be wrong to suggest Saipan takes a side, but you could reasonably argue that Keane seems a sympatric figure until he threatens to quit the team. It helps that Hardwicke initially gives us a less hard-edged version of the footballer than that favoured by contemporaneous impressionists.<\/p>\n

He is a family man. He is a conscientious and focused worker. His outbursts are initially more comic than furious. \u201cYou think the Portuguese are eating cheese sandwiches,\u201d he says with a smile during the catering controversy. That early likeability makes the final meltdown all the more shocking.<\/p>\n

Coogan has a more difficult task with a less demonstrative character. Resisting the temptation to turn the Yorkshire-born manager into one of his signature buffoons, he instead leans into a quiet decency that opens up fewer opportunities for humour. It is a humane portrayal in a film that, more than 20 years after the event, seems open to understanding. There are poignant considerations here of the complex collisions between different classes of Irishness.<\/p>\n

There is also a lot of fun to be had. Dina Coughlan and Rory McPartland, the music supervisors, strike gold with the inclusion of Bob Dylan\u2019s Positively 4th Street as tensions rise. \u201cYou got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend,\u201d the song begins. The final cue, which we shan\u2019t spoil, is even better.<\/p>\n

So, yes, an entertaining, disputatious ride. Even for those who don\u2019t know one end of a football from another.<\/p>\n

In cinemas from New Year\u2019s Day, with previews from St Stephen\u2019s Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saipan \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 Director: Lisa Barros D\u2019Sa, Glenn Leyburn Cert: 15A Starring: Steve Coogan, \u00c9anna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[273,93,61,60,272,271,274],"class_list":{"0":"post-210140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eanna-hardwicke","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-mick-mccarthy","13":"tag-roy-keane","14":"tag-steve-coogan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}