Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Starring: Steve Coogan, Éanna Hardwicke, Alice Lowe, Jamie Beamish, Alex Murphy, Harriet Cains, Peter McDonald
For WWII buffs, the Pacific island of Saipan is best known for staging a pivotal 1944 battle that allowed America's bombers to reach the Japanese mainland and level the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn's Saipan isn't about that battle, but rather another heated conflict that played out on the island 78 years later.
If you were Irish in the summer of 2002 you were either Team Keane or Team McCarthy. The Republic of Ireland had qualified for its third (and at time of writing at least, its last) World Cup. Though the team boasted other quality players like Robbie Keane, Niall Quinn and Damien Duff, the hopes of a nation were largely weighted on the shoulders of team captain Roy Keane, the engine room of Manchester United. Things turned sour and a nation found itself divided when Keane walked away from the team's training camp in Saipan just days before the start of the tournament. Rumours of a rift between Keane and the team's manager, former player Mick McCarthy, quickly spread, with the media scrambling for the truth.
Both men gave their statements at the time, and much has come out in the wash since. Working with a script by Shane Meadows' collaborator Paul Fraser, Barros D'Sa and Leyburn have opted for a "print the legend" approach, incorporating long dispelled rumours of the sort of hurtful words Keane and McCarthy might have thrown in each other's direction.
The movie largely falls into the Team Keane camp. As played by rising star Éanna Hardwicke, Keane is portrayed as stubborn but righteous, while the version of McCarthy on display here is a snivelling bootlicker. When the team arrives in Saipan and finds the facilities falling far short of what's required for professional athletes to prepare for the biggest moment of their sporting lives, Keane provides the sole voice of dissent. The hotel's air conditioning is faulty, the food consists of cheese sandwiches and someone forgot to bring footballs, but McCarthy takes a laissez-faire attitude, assuring his captain that it will all work out fine, or in Irish vernacular, "sure, it'll be grand." As it becomes increasingly clear that it absolutely won't be grand, Keane decides to make a stand against his manager.
By 2002 Ireland was deep into its "Celtic Tiger" era, for the first time in its history an economic powerhouse and on paper if not in the public's pockets, one of the richest countries in the world. The old "it'll be grand" attitude was becoming a national embarrassment shaken off by a new generation of Irish strivers keen to transcend national stereotypes and prove they deserved a seat at a global table that had long treated the Irish like a dog to be patted on the head and fed on scraps. What Saipan does best is embody this conflict with the determined Keane refusing to accept "it'll be grand" from McCarthy, an English-born son of Irish emigrants. Even today you see on social media how many of the Irish diaspora resent the country of their ancestors doing well, preferring it to remain stuck in a past of poverty and Paddywhackery, wishing Ireland to be a theme park they might some day visit rather than a functioning first world society. Rumours of Keane using McCarthy's English status against him have long been debunked, but the controversial inclusion of this dynamic undoubtedly makes for juicy drama. The cathartic scene in which Keane finally lets loose on McCarthy in front of the rest of the players is deeply uncomfortable to watch. If you're Irish or a part of its diaspora, it's like watching your parents fight. Though I'm very much Team McCarthy as far as the real conflict is concerned, I've grown so tired of sixth generation Americans and Brits telling me they're more Irish than those of us born in Ireland that I found myself close to punching the air when Keane refuses to indulge McCarthy's claims that both men are equally Irish.
Coogan is well cast for the blubbering version of McCarthy the film opts for, but highly miscast if this is supposed to be a realistic portrayal of the man. In reality McCarthy is one of the more thoughtful and intelligent men in football, but Saipan reduces him to an inarticulate George W. Bush clone, constantly misquoting inspirational messages in his team talk. Coogan is at his best when playing uncharismatic men who mistakenly believe they possess charisma, but McCarthy is genuinely charismatic, a man who can hold a room's attention with his presence, whereas in Coogan's hands he's a shrinking nebbish, a cousin of Alan Partridge.
There is something uncomfortably classist in Saipan's portrayal of the world of football, with Keane the lone intellectual surrounded by illiterate dullards. At points it feels like a football movie made by and for middle class rugby fans who wish to look down their noses and scoff at this working class world. The depiction of Keane's teammates as a bunch of piss artists is frankly ridiculous, as the old football culture of boozing was well in the past by 2002, by which point the average footballer was a granola-eating choirboy.
But what holds all this together is Hardwicke's turn here. His sinewy performance evokes a teenage boy who has grown taller than his father and refuses to continue following his arbitrary rules. While the script is largely in Keane's corner, Hardwicke's clenched performance captures the one element that always made Keane such a divisive figure: his simmering aggression and underlying threat of violence. While nobody will watch Saipan and fail to understand why Keane was so put out by the lack of professionalism displayed by the Football Association of Ireland, there is a sense that Keane was a hammer and McCarthy just happened to be a convenient nail.
Saipan is in Irish cinemas now and in UK cinemas from January 23rd.
