Kicking It
Directed by Susan Koch & Jeff Werner
at CC Village East Cinemas
Celebrity narration in the modern documentary usually reeks of pandering. Fortunately, the fleeting glimpse of Colin Farrell in the opening minutes of Kicking It doesn’t ruin the strongly composed drama that follows it. Farrell pops in to set the stage for the Homeless World Cup, an annual chance for less-fortunate souls from around the globe to battle their way out of poverty and other misfortunes on the soccer field. Farrell doesn’t provide any information that a simple subtitle could just as easily provide, but it’s clear that his involvement helps with the kind of exposure that the Homeless World Cup seeks to provide—so at the very least it’s consistent with the rest of the package.
The popularization of sports documentaries in recent years has allowed for the rise of a new genre dealing exclusively with fringe athletic pursuits, ranging from the bizarrely fascinating intensity of furious quadriplegics in Murderball to the full-grown geeks reigning over the arcade world in King of Kong. The appeal of Kicking It, sharply directed by Susan Koch and Jeff Werner, lies somewhere between those two extremes. The movie looks good and takes the unlikely subject matter at face value. There’s nothing remotely cute about it, and that’s refreshing.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine how a filmmaker might turn this international lineup of former drug abusers and downtrodden street dwellers into simplified entertainment. They’re not given a free lunch, either; the competition, which involved 48 countries and 500 players, requires a heavy degree of athleticism, and the less-than-stellar teams don’t get a break. The symbolism implied by watching Ireland go up against struggling players from the United States, Spain and Russia (the movie follows seven stories from around the globe) is mercifully downplayed for the sake of avoiding obviousness—although it’s worth noting that the American team can hardly compete against their homeless rivals. Read into that if you want, but the film doesn’t.
Plain-spoken and smoothly paced, the story quickly establishes a host of former addicts and others with their own particular sob stories before delving into an intensive round of training sessions and then the maddened seven days of tournament in 2006, where the game goes down in Germany.
Although Farrell returns in the closing moments for an annoying summarization of what came before (“Even a ball could change their lives”), it’s an earlier assertion by a Russian player, hoping “to catch the attention of public opinion,” that truly sums up the film’s raison d’etre: It’s not the ball that matters—but rather the feet Kicking It.
Directed by Susan Koch & Jeff Werner
at CC Village East Cinemas
Celebrity narration in the modern documentary usually reeks of pandering. Fortunately, the fleeting glimpse of Colin Farrell in the opening minutes of Kicking It doesn’t ruin the strongly composed drama that follows it. Farrell pops in to set the stage for the Homeless World Cup, an annual chance for less-fortunate souls from around the globe to battle their way out of poverty and other misfortunes on the soccer field. Farrell doesn’t provide any information that a simple subtitle could just as easily provide, but it’s clear that his involvement helps with the kind of exposure that the Homeless World Cup seeks to provide—so at the very least it’s consistent with the rest of the package.
The popularization of sports documentaries in recent years has allowed for the rise of a new genre dealing exclusively with fringe athletic pursuits, ranging from the bizarrely fascinating intensity of furious quadriplegics in Murderball to the full-grown geeks reigning over the arcade world in King of Kong. The appeal of Kicking It, sharply directed by Susan Koch and Jeff Werner, lies somewhere between those two extremes. The movie looks good and takes the unlikely subject matter at face value. There’s nothing remotely cute about it, and that’s refreshing.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine how a filmmaker might turn this international lineup of former drug abusers and downtrodden street dwellers into simplified entertainment. They’re not given a free lunch, either; the competition, which involved 48 countries and 500 players, requires a heavy degree of athleticism, and the less-than-stellar teams don’t get a break. The symbolism implied by watching Ireland go up against struggling players from the United States, Spain and Russia (the movie follows seven stories from around the globe) is mercifully downplayed for the sake of avoiding obviousness—although it’s worth noting that the American team can hardly compete against their homeless rivals. Read into that if you want, but the film doesn’t.
Plain-spoken and smoothly paced, the story quickly establishes a host of former addicts and others with their own particular sob stories before delving into an intensive round of training sessions and then the maddened seven days of tournament in 2006, where the game goes down in Germany.
Although Farrell returns in the closing moments for an annoying summarization of what came before (“Even a ball could change their lives”), it’s an earlier assertion by a Russian player, hoping “to catch the attention of public opinion,” that truly sums up the film’s raison d’etre: It’s not the ball that matters—but rather the feet Kicking It.
