![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/after-dark-logo_587c93_f57056.webp\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark<\/a>\u00a0honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with\u00a0midnight movies<\/a>\u00a0from any moment in\u00a0film<\/a>\u00a0history.<\/p>\n First, the\u00a0BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we\u2019re exploring its specific niche\u00a0right now.\u00a0Then, the\u00a0BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question,\u00a0\u201cIs this old cult film actually worth recommending?\u201d<\/p>\n The Bait: Witness the Weirder Work of a True Cinematic Athlete <\/p>\n In 1981, the unlikely trio of Michael Caine<\/a>, Sylvester Stallone<\/a>, and Max Von Sydow came together to star in director John Huston<\/a>\u2019s \u201cEscape to Victory<\/a>\u201d (released as simply \u201cVictory<\/a>\u201d in the U.S.), a war and sports movie that also starred a who\u2019s who of then-celebrity soccer players like Pel\u00e9 and Bobby Moore. A remake of the much more colorfully titled Hungarian film \u201cTwo Half Times in Hell,\u201d \u201cVictory\u201d tells the story of a group of Allied POWs who play an exhibition soccer match against their Nazi captors, a game that comes to symbolize something far larger than what\u2019s on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n If that premise sounds familiar, it should \u2014 it\u2019s basically the same concept (guards vs. prisoners in an athletic match) that propelled Robert Aldrich\u2019s 1974 Burt Reynolds vehicle \u201cThe Longest Yard.\u201d But where that movie was an irreverent comedy that felt right at home in the era of Robert Altman, Patty Hearst, and political turmoil at home and overseas, \u201cVictory\u201d plays it straight. It\u2019s as earnest and classically constructed as \u201cThe Longest Yard\u201d is raucous and shaggy, as much a reflection of its more conformist (both in terms of cinema and politics) time as \u201cThe Longest Yard\u201d was of the year in which Richard Nixon got tossed out on his ass.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an interesting bit of old-fashioned escapism from one of the least soothing directors to come out of the classical Hollywood system; right from the beginning, with his directorial debut \u201cThe Maltese Falcon\u201d in 1941, John Huston made movies that curdled with moral ambiguity, if not outright cynicism. His \u201cTreasure of the Sierra Madre\u201d remains one of the most gleefully and authentically nasty films ever to come out of Hollywood\u2019s dream factory, and later works like \u201cThe Asphalt Jungle,\u201d \u201cBeat the Devil,\u201d and \u201cThe Misfits\u201d are comparably bleak and confrontational.<\/p>\n It\u2019s perhaps not surprising that in his old age Huston would mellow a bit, as he did with \u201cVictory\u201d and the film that followed it, the big-budget musical extravaganza \u201cAnnie.\u201d What\u2019s fascinating is that these two movies are sandwiched in between some of his weirdest and most ambitious work. The year before \u201cVictory\u201d Huston made a Canadian tax shelter slasher film (!), \u201cPhobia,\u201d and he finished his career off after \u201cAnnie\u201d with three exquisite gems in a row: \u201cUnder the Volcano,\u201d \u201cPrizzi\u2019s Honor,\u201d and \u201cThe Dead,\u201d each of which was as daring, complex, and visually accomplished as anything in the director\u2019s career.<\/p>\n Indeed, Huston was on a bit of a streak starting in 1979, when he helmed his hypnotic adaptation of Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s \u201cWise Blood.\u201d At a time when contemporaries like Billy Wilder and Richard Brooks were losing their cultural relevance (and their financing), Huston kept making movies at a clip of nearly one a year. How did he do it? In a way, the fact that Huston was made up of two halves \u2014 one part iconoclastic maverick, one part old school craftsman \u2014 gave him an edge his fellow septuagenarians lacked.<\/p>\n While the best films of his early career, like \u201cMadre,\u201d tended to synthesize his polarities, Huston\u2019s late years were spent toggling between the two depending on the demands of the marketplace and the financing opportunities afforded him. As someone who couldn\u2019t care less about sports (as Martin Scorsese once said, \u201canything with a ball, no good\u201d), for me the value of \u201cVictory\u201d lies less in its content or celebrity athlete appearances than in the pleasure of watching an old pro like Huston taking his own last victory lap as an escapist entertainer.<\/p>\n \u201cAnnie,\u201d for all its pleasures, was a bit of a behemoth, nearly crushing Huston and the actors under its weight. \u201cVictory\u201d is more perfectly calibrated, an elegantly balanced ensemble film that expertly delivers the satisfactions of multiple genres (the sports movie, the WWII film, the prison escape picture) and provides a showcase for three very different types of movie stars, serving them all equally well. Objectively speaking, it\u2019s kind of a weird movie with a weird premise \u2014 but Huston pulls it all together as gracefully as he orchestrated all those complicated plot twists in his filmmaking debut 40 years earlier. \u2014Jim Hemphill<\/p>\n The Bite: Bend It Like\u2026 That Really Brave Ukrainian Baker? <\/p>\n Before I say anything more about the most predictable cheating scandal in cinematic sports history (you\u2019re telling me that the Nazis\u2026 lied?!), I should probably admit that Jim didn\u2019t actually recommend \u201cVictory\u201d for me to watch this week. Like a lot of After Dark picks, I actually got interested in this cult film while researching another subject \u2014\u00a0and then bullied a colleague who had already seen it into taking the credit.<\/p>\n In this case, my point of interest was the World Cup<\/a>. But like Jim, I\u2019m not much of a sports girl. And having already watched the Portuguese sci-fi comedy \u201cDiamantino\u201d as my alternative-to-FIFA programming in 2023 (read that After Dark selection here!<\/a>), this bizarre POW drama won me over faster with its curdled politics than its presumably timeless display of athletics.<\/p>\n In fact, watching \u201cVictory\u201d today, I couldn\u2019t help but think about just how much the world has changed since Huston\u2019s film premiered in 1981. Back then, Sylvester Stallone was one of Hollywood\u2019s most beloved action stars. Now, he\u2019s still famous but, fairly or unfairly, closely associated with the conservative backlash<\/a> currently reshaping much of the entertainment industry under President Trump.<\/p>\n That kind of social baggage isn\u2019t Stallone\u2019s fault, but it does make for a uniquely uncomfortable viewing experience in light of modern events. The token American in a group of WWII Allies that would honestly do way better without him, Stallone\u2019s Hatch spends far too much of \u201cVictory\u201d looking out for himself (and sexually harassing that nice French woman) to still become the script\u2019s unlikely hero. And yet, there\u2019s no denying that this particular moment in global history feels ideal for watching a U.S. goalie fumble the ball.<\/p>\n The 2026 World Cup has been a lightning rod for political controversy thus far. Critics have accused FIFA and the tournament\u2019s host nations of using international spectacle to distract from ongoing human rights concerns, labor abuse issues, and increasingly authoritarian policies in the West. With that in mind, it\u2019s difficult not to view \u201cVictory\u201d through a similarly cynical lens.<\/p>\n Here is a film where fascists literally organize a soccer game for propaganda purposes, hoping to stage a sportsman-like event that will soften the public perception of their brutal regime. The Nazis corrupt the referee, of course, but they\u2019re also remarkably committed to the idea that sports can function as a powerful political distraction. 85 years later, that premise feels less like fiction than it does a recurring quirk of international diplomacy.<\/p>\n Then there are the Eastern European players in \u201cVictory.\u201d One of the movie\u2019s most haunting subplots involves prisoners, who are pulled from labor camps looking half-dead and subsequently folded into Michael Caine<\/a>\u2018s soccer team at the Brit\u2019s insistence, but possibly to his squad\u2019s detriment. Watching those scenes while Russia continues its war against Ukraine was genuinely unsettling. The arc is also remarkable considering \u201cVictory\u201d competed at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival that year: a daring choice that still stands out for its layered historical meaning decades later.<\/p>\n The moral assumptions surrounding Huston\u2019s film feel entirely different today than they likely did when audiences first encountered it. But what ultimately stayed with me was the realization that \u201cVictory\u201d isn\u2019t really based on a victory at all. As Jim mentioned, this loose remake of 1961\u2019s \u201cTwo Half Times in Hell\u201d takes inspiration from the real 1942 Death Match: a mysterious and infamous soccer game held in Nazi-occupied Kyiv, where former professional footballers reportedly defeated a German military team.<\/p>\n The version that entered popular culture after the war was stirring. Oppressed athletes refused to lose, defeated their captors, and became immortal symbols of resistance so strong they demanded to be played by Stallone and Caine. The reality, of course, was messier and more tragic. Check out this thorough explainer on YouTube<\/a>, which surprisingly traces the team\u2019s origins back to a Ukrainian bakery.<\/p>\n Several Death Match players were later arrested, imprisoned, and killed, though not in the immediate act of public martyrdom that later retellings of their ordeal sometimes suggest. That gap between horrifying fact and escapist fantasy is what makes Huston\u2019s film so fascinating now. As \u201cVictory\u201d imagined an alternate reality where a symbolic triumph produced tangible freedom for POWs, I found myself wondering what the director would make of this film\u2019s legacy if he were alive today.<\/p>\n Would Huston be proud that this baffling story continues to find new audiences during the World Cup? Or, nearly 40 years after his death in 1987, would he be horrified by just how relevant its themes still feel? A movie about displaced Eastern Europeans, and the nasty relationship between spectacle and politics shouldn\u2019t seem so contemporary \u2014\u00a0but here we are.<\/p>\n![\"'Valley](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-VD-Still_2.485.1.png\")
<\/a> ![\"'She's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Misha_Nico4_4ed021.png\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MSDVICT_EC005.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/M8DVICT_EC013.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MCDVICT_EC010.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)\u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MCDVICT_EC011-1.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)\u00a9Paramount<\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/MCDVICT_EC005.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)\u00a9Paramount<\/p>\n![\"VICTORY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/M8DVICT_EC001.jpg\")
\u2018Victory\u2019 (1981)\u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"Director](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/PBDJOHU_EC071.jpg\")
Director John Huston on location (possibly for \u2018Victory\u2019) in 1981Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n