Movie Reviews: Saipan — Roy Keane teetering on the brink of a very Irish tragedy.

Keane lives by the mantra ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’, but the set-up on Saipan seems to be mainly designed as a jolly for the FAI yahoos led by the oily ‘Dickie Maloney’

Saipan

★★★★☆

Singer-songwriter Andy White once anointed James Joyce as the keeper and crucifier of his country’s conscience, but even Joyce might accept that Roy Keane inherited that particular mantle during the events depicted in Saipan (15A). 

Ireland’s only world-class footballer as the team set off for the tiny Pacific island to prepare for the 2002 World Cup, Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) is disgusted to discover that the facilities are sub-standard, and vents his anger on the Irish manager, Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan). 

Keane lives by the mantra ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’, but the set-up on Saipan seems to be mainly designed as a jolly for the FAI yahoos led by the oily ‘Dickie Maloney’ (Jamie Beamish). 

Meanwhile, McCarthy’s opinion of Keane is that ‘what makes him a great player on the pitch makes him a pain in the arse off it.’ And so the scene is set for a seismic encounter that transcends the sport of football to become something of a referendum on how the Irish go about their business. 

Written by Paul Fraser and directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, the movie is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about the rights and wrongs of what happened during that fateful week on Saipan. 

Instead, the story presents two very different but equally likeable characters: Keane the superb athlete is hawk-eyed in his pursuit of winning (football fans with long memories might well find themselves thinking forward to that last-16 loss on penalties to Spain and wondering ‘What if …’), while McCarthy is a bluff but personable man who is fully aware of his own and the team’s limitations (‘He’s probably doing his best,’ says Keane witheringly). 

Both leads turn in strong performances, although Hardwicke has the advantage here given that Keane is by some distance the more dramatic character, driven to achieve the highest possible standards and teetering on the brink of a very Irish tragedy.

Song Sung Blue

★★★★☆

Based on a true story, Song Sung Blue (12A) opens with Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) meeting Claire Stingl (Kate Hudson) while both are performing as pop music impersonators.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson bring the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina to life in the musical drama ‘Song Sung Blue’

Teaming up as ‘Lightning and Thunder’, the pair go on the road – i.e., do the rounds of Milwaukee’s karaoke joints and dive bars – playing the songs of Neil Diamond. 

Romance blossoms as the duo become wildly popular throughout Wisconsin, but just as it seems they might be about to break it big, disaster strikes. Adapted by Craig Brewer from Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, Song Sung Blue plunders the Neil Diamond songbook to soundtrack a very unusual love story. 

Jackman and Hudson are both impressive (and both showcase superb singing talent) in a rollercoaster tale of addiction, depression and a shared love of making music, but while Jackman takes centre-stage as the Neil Diamond ‘interpreter’, don’t be surprised if it’s Hudson who shows up in the Oscar nominations. 

Peter Hujar’s Day

★★★★☆

In 1974, journalist Linda Rosenkranz (Rebecca Hall) arrived at the New York apartment of photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Wishaw), set up her tape recorder and asked him what he did the previous day. 

Peter Hujar’s Day

The result is Peter Hujar’s Day (12A), which is adapted by director Ira Sachs from Rosenkranz’s transcript of the day’s interview, and largely consists of Rosenkranz prompting Hujar with queries and listening to his rambling, gossipy account of dealing with Susan Sontag, Elle magazine, Lauren Hutton, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, among others. 

‘Is it boring?’ Hujar asks at one point. 

In fact, the two-hander, which takes place almost entirely in Hujar’s apartment, is hypnotically fascinating, even as Hujar details such banal minutiae as what he ate, how much he smoked, and what he wore whilst slumming it on the Lower East Side. 

Beautifully rendered in the flattened, earthy palette of 1970s film stock, it’s an unconventional glimpse into the mind and method of a minor artist. 

All theatrical releases