(Just fucking play the game, already… )
CAST: Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham, David Hemmings, Ralph Brown, Jason Flemyng, Vas Blackwood.
DIRECTOR: Barry Skolnick
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and too much dialogue and not enough soccer - straight ahead.
During our first Soccer/Football Week back in December, we reviewed BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (review # 184) and GOAL! (review # 185) and discussed just how beloved football (AKA Soccer) is in the British Isles. Nope, scratch that… “Beloved” just doesn’t seem strong enough of an adjective. “Worshipped” is more like it. In fact, I firmly believe that if footballs (AKA Soccer balls) had three-inch slits in them, British men would never have sex with women ever again. That’s pretty much a Brit dude’s ideal: a football with a vagina.
Football is so, ahem, worshipped today in the United Kingdom, that most people (including many Brits themselves) would be shocked to know that there was a time in centuries past when football was illegal in Britain. During the reign of King Edward II in the 14th Century, playing football was right up there, offense-wise, with arson and public masturbation. Oh, wait… public masturbation didn’t become an offense in Britain until 1995. My bad.
At any rate, back then football was known as “Mob Football”. This involved a (care to guess?) mob kicking around a (care to guess again?) football through the streets of London. These little events weren’t so much games or matches, as they were sessions of mass destruction. Let’s just say there were no rules. Well, maybe one rule: Don’t get your ass trampled. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Mob Football was essentially the Running of the Bulls in Pamplone. Only the bulls were all human and even more blood-thirsty - and there was only one runner: the ball.
Football’s origins in violent, rambunctious behavior has a direct bearing on our next review. MEAN MACHINE is basically a British remake of THE LONGEST YARD, the Burt Reynolds flick about prison inmates who form a football (American kind) team and duke it out with the prison guards, who have their own team. MEAN MACHINE is set in England and turns the sport into English football (AKA Soccer), and infuses the whole thing with the sharp British humor that I crave the way Cheech and Chong jones for weed.
Our hero this go-around is Danny “Mean” Meehan (Vinnie Jones). Danny was one of England’s premier footballers - until a “game-fixing” scandal put an end to his career the way a backseat blowjob and a hooker usually puts the kibosh on a Senator’s. To make matters worse, Danny goes on a drinking-and-driving spree that results in several things happening: (1) him getting pulled over by the cops; (2) him smacking one of the cops across the face; (3) him smacking the other cop upside the head; and (4) him getting his fine ass sent to the slammer for 3 years for, I guess, not drinking the right kind of whiskey before assaulting members of Her Royal Majesty‘s Donut Eaters.
It’s a fairly far drop from the lofty perches of “National Football Star” to “Just Another Convict on Cell Block Seven“. Fortunately, Danny’s one of those guys who could be shitting molten-hot broken glass, but barely breaks a sweat or twitches a facial muscle. Gotta love him. Unfortunately, not all of his new, um, neighbors feel the same way. This is completely understandable, since they’re all sorts of criminals who don’t exactly understand what this rich asshole is doing among them.
Turns out the warden of the prison, The Governor (David Hemmings), has a hidden agenda. Apparently, there’s such a thing as a Prisoner Football League, and the team has been struggling as of late. I don’t have to tell you that having an ex-football star turn up as an inmate isn’t so much a “Godsend” as it is a “Fucking Preposterous Coincidence”. But whatevs… Needless to say, the Guv doesn’t spend too much time looking that particular gift horse in the mouth.
There’s one problem, though. Danny isn’t interested in coaching the prison team. Not even after the bushy-eyebrowed bastard that is The Guv tosses his fine ass into solitary. Just when it looks like Danny is going to be devoured alive by the three dozen cockroaches he shares his digs with, loyal new pal Massive (Vas Blackwood) talks some sense into him. Before you know it, Danny agrees to be the inmates’ new coach - and challenges the prison guards to a - ha ha ha - “friendly match.” Right. And THE WAR OF THE ROSES was about a mild altercation between a married couple over leaving the toilet seat up.
Will the inmates triumph over the guards? Will Danny prove to be an inspiration? Will he whip his team into shape in time? What happens when the deeply hot (and deeply dangerous) inmate named Monk (Jason Statham) joins the team? Will he kill them all? Or will he prove that he’s more than an impressive body count (and more than a very impressive body)? And the most important question of all: is Monk perhaps the hottest goalkeeper in the history of football?
Too bad he’s in prison for killing 23 men with his bare hands. Just think of all the other ways he could use those hands…
Excuse me while I fill the bathtub with ice cubes and submerge myself in it. Ten times more effective than a cold shower. But a hundred times less effective than, you know, just fucking someone‘s brains out…
BUT, SERIOUSLY: I haven’t seen the THE LONGEST YARD, so I can’t really say how it compares to MEAN MACHINE. Still, I’d imagine they probably play quite differently. For starters, MEAN MACHINE is filled with droll, edgy British humor and revolves around soccer (AKA football), while THE LONGEST YARD probably has a more typical American flavor and revolves around American Football. Sometimes, changing the major details of a remake can transform it into something very different. I have a feeling that might be the case here.
The cast, true to British form, is uniformly impressive and engaging. Vinnie Jones may not be the most expressive lead, but he certainly has the presence and athleticism to pull off the role of disgraced athlete Danny Meehan, who finds redemption through his offbeat team. Jason Statham is an arresting sight as Monk, and he draws your attention both on and off the field. The rest of the characters are essayed by such talented folks as Jason Flemyng, Vass Blackwood, David Hemmings, and Ralph Brown, and they all register just as strongly as Jones and Statham.
What keeps MEAN MACHINE from hitting the mark are, surprisingly, the football scenes. In films like BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and GOAL!, the matches were so kinetic and dynamic that you got swept into the game in a visceral way. In MEAN MACHINE, with the exception of a couple of sequences, these scenes are a little muted. There’s a curious lack of energy in these moments, with too much of a laid-back, low-key feel. Given that we’re dealing with prisoners vs. prison guards, you’d expect to see more fire and grit during the games.
Also, it takes forever for the football action to kick in. We spend a lot of time with the prisoners and their various relationships with one another. Normally, I'm all for character development and plot exposition, but a football film shouldn't have to make us wait so long for the fireworks on the field. This would've been fine if the eventual football action was stellar. However, as discussed above, it's just okay. Bottom line: the football action should've been more explosive - and there should've been more of it.
In the end, MEAN MACHINE is an okay football/soccer flick. It’s definitely above average, but it stops just short of being an outright good film due to those curiously mellow game scenes - which take forever to happen.
