Believe

John Chard 5/16/2024 3:22:09PM 8.4

Oh Manchester, so much to answer for. Believe is a British football movie that finds the legendary Sir Matt Busby (Brian Cox) coaching a kids 7 a side football team. Matt Busby was the manager of Manchester United Football Club, who lost their team of starlets (known as The Busby Babes) to the Munich air crash of 1958. Busby would then go on to rebuild the team and make them into a world force, one that still exists today. Here he is in long retirement exile, but still moulding young football minds. It's based on true events. We have a heavy dose of sentimentality on offer here, not just with the flashbacks to the tragic loss of The Busby Babes, but also to the working class kids of terrace housed Manchester. Of single parents trying to make ends meet, of kids with absent fathers erring on the wrong side of the law, education a dangled carrot just out of reach. However, the sentimentality is not cloying, it's well handled and performed, but the pic never gets to uplift status. It has some good laughs in the mix, usually when Toby Stephens' pompous school tutor is on screen, while the ultimate conclusion - even though it's what we expect - warms the cockles, but it never branches out to be more than just a family film for kiddies who like football, or for Manchester folk eager for anything involving Sir Matt Busby. It makes for a decent "B" movie support to There's Only One Jimmy Grimble, though not nearly as good as that film. Cox, Stephens and the tender Busby Babes sequences (very Field of Dreams) make it worth a watch, but it should have been smarter and better. 6/10