Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ignore the other review -this is surprisingly ok, 27 Jul 2004
By A Customer
I approached this with some trepidation as football movies genrally honk, but this was ok. The football scenes were better than most, McCoist was a revelation and the language suitably unsanitised. Yes, there were drawbacks - the dodgy "footage" and the occasional mistake ("Queen of the South regulalry bring 8,000"!!). Also, the story is slightly predicatble and Morag Hood not very convincing. However, the ending is unexpected, Duvall does as fine an accent as I've heard from a foreigner and it is mostly shot in the wonderful village of Crail.
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Should have dressed Duvall in a kilt, 13 Feb 2006
Every couple of years, a film is released about some underdog baseball, hockey, basketball, or (U.S. style) football team that surmounts great odds to win the Big One under the leadership of an inspiring coach. Maybe some day it'll be curling. In any case, A SHOT AT GLORY puts the viewer into the stands for Scotland's brand of soccer.
A long way from Lonsome Dove on the Rio Grande, Robert Duvall plays Gordon McLeod, the coach of the team playing for the town of Kilnockie. The club's owner, Yank Peter Cameron (Michael Keaton), has just acquired, to Gordon's disgust, mega-star Jackie McQuillan (Ally McCoist). Jackie, though a talented player, has a volatile temper and is the philandering husband of Gordon's daughter Kate (Kirsty Mitchell). Adding insult to injury, McQuillan had persuaded Kate to marry outside of her parents' church.As Kilnockie, a second-tier team, battles its way into the company of the Big Boys and the Scottish National Cup championship match against the powerhouse Glasgow Rangers, Duvall's sometimes incomprehensible Scottish brogue is the best reason to see A SHOT AT GLORY. I'm no judge of the dialect, but Duvall seemed a natural at it. And I could lose myself in Mitchell's strikingly beautiful eyes. However, if the film appeared in an "art theater" near me, I can understand why it must have been for no longer that it takes to kick a penalty shot. Besides the relatively unfamiliar milieu, the unusual (for the genre) ending might perhaps be uninspiring. The inclusion of the Kelsey (Cole Hauser) character, an American rookie goalie that gets thrust into a tough spot, could have provided a subplot of considerable substance if fully developed; but it wasn't. Even putting Duvall in a kilt would have raised it a notch. A soccer fan will likely rate the movie higher as is, especially since McCoist played magnificently for many years with the real-life Glasgow Rangers and was Europe's top scorer in the early 90s. Because of Duvall's top billing, I wanted to like A SHOT AT GLORY much more than I did. I guess I'll just have to plug in my much-viewed copy of LONESOME DOVE and once again watch old Gus herd those beeves to Montana.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scottish Neorealist Masterpiece, 12 Dec 2007
A strong ensemble cast including Scots footballing legends Andy Smith, Ian McCall and Peter Hetherston are let down by a frankly woeful performance from the hapless Duvall, whose accent lurches in all directions like a drunkard at an OVD Juniors Cup game. If you were to close your eyes you could imagine you were at a drinking party with both Paul Gascoigne and Andy Goram. Except you wouldn't want to do that, because then you'd miss some of the sizzling on-screen action.
The debutant Ally McCoist cuts a rakish figure as Jackie McQuillan, a sort of Frank McAvennie-meets-Bergerac figure who, when not cheating on his wife, is knocking out Ian McCall for trash talkin' about her on the pitch. McQuillan is undoubtedly one of the most fully realised characters to hit the screen in recent years, a man riven with contradictions and superbly played by the laconic McCoist. One can discern a certain essence of the great thinker Soren Kierkegaard in McQuillan's seduction, and ultimately cynical rejection of the young women he encounters.
The decision of the director to film larges slices of the action in real Scottish locations further enchances the feeling of verisimilitude, and this, combined with strong performances from gifted amateurs such as Keaton, evokes nothing short of the Italian neorealist classics of the 1940's and 50's.
I would recommend this film to anyone who loves soccer, or fans of arthouse cinema in general.
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