In the discussion (13)
Approx. transcript time · 00:29:22Read transcript
- The ending will win, but a couple of picks from the first 90 minutes are included.
- The first von Steiner and Colby scenes are liked: the cat-and-mouse while Steiner watches the soccer, "Can I have my ball back," and the negotiation proposing a friendly match.
- Colby objects not on moral grounds but over boots and resources, prioritizing beer and shirts for the players while other prisoners stay caged.
- The first big training sequence leads to Pele grabbing the chalk; any time Pele gets to cook, the film is great.
- Pele's character being from Trinidad is presumably a wartime workaround, even though Stallone's character is in the Canadian Air Force.
- No other pick until the last 30 minutes, which hold five of eight picks.
- Pele gets demolished with apparent broken ribs, turns back while walking off to the music, and that leads to the cross, Stallone kicked in the face, and the blurry counterattack; that minute is put up against any minute in a sports movie and named the pick.
- The famous tunnel scene is floated as a possible pick: Hatch urging escape, the Scottish player insisting "we can win this," and Pele's speech.
- The next two Allies goals are praised; a team down to 10 men scoring unanswered goals never happens, with a disallowed fifth joked about as German VAR.
- Pele returns holding his ribs to set up the bicycle kick, and the good Nazi stands up to applaud it.
- The penalty stop and crowd-rush escape are loved, though the Germans would surely have opened fire and hundreds would not escape.
- Final pick: Pele getting hurt through the first Allies goal is the favorite minute of the movie.
- The other pick goes with that, calling the Ardiles goal the favorite goal, with the comeback culminating in Caine walking into the halftime locker room, where one player has a compound fracture and Pele cannot breathe.