The Rewatchables - ‘Victory’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan return to the stadium to finish the second half of the game after rewatching the 1981 film ‘Victory’ starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and Pel��. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fantasy football is back, and you don't want your team to suck. My favorite fantasy football punishment I've ever heard is the last place guy had to spend 24 hours in a waffle house, and every waffle he ate was one hour off of his count. I want numbers. How many did he end up eating? 12 waffles and 12 hours. I'm Danny Hyattitz. I'm Danny Kelly. And I'm Craig Horlebeck.

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Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. The rewatchables is brought to you by the ringer.com as well as the ringer podcast network where you can find Chris Ryan on the watch with Andy Greenwald and you can find him on Ringer MBA show with The Answer on Fridays. And you can find him on the big picture

with Sean Fantasy's podcast as well sometimes. Coming up, please, Hatch, you must play. You know how much this game means to us. Please, if we run now, we lose more than a game. Please, Hatch. Victory is next. We want you to contact the resistance for us and arrange the escape of the football team.

Stallone. You don't be sure to despise, do we? No, I don't want to be shy as anything. Kane. I won't be responsible for your death. One C-Dow. The German national team will play a combined team from the prisoners of war.

Haley. How'd you like to play football against the Germans? Why not? Victory. Now. is the time for heroes rated PG. All right, Chris Ryan is here. It's episode 199 of the rewatchables.

Victory. Really called Escape to Victory. I like Escape to Victory better. I don't know why they change it to victory. I think there was some sort of trademark thing. But this is one of the great sports movies of my life. It is a movie that turned 40 years old last week, which is why we're doing it.

I think it has the best extended sports movie sequence of all time. It's like 25 minutes long. I will defend it to the death. The rest of the movie is a little long, but still rewatchable. There's a lot of holes. But I'm going to start here, Chris Ryan. I think you could argue this was the greatest sports movie premise of all time. I would argue that this might be the greatest premise of any movie of all time.

Greatest movie premise of all time. Okay. Bill, there are two things I'm really passionate about. The beautiful game, soccer, and escaping from World War II, POWW can. and some genius was like, let's put these two things together. It's such an inassailable premise. I cannot believe you would have thought like all the movies that we loved over the years and they remake some of them and it always hurts my feelings.

Like Adam Sandler, God bless him, but when he redid the longest yard, I was so upset. To me, that movie's sacred. I still think it's really good and it's like, how dare you? Victory is a movie that you would have thought somebody would have remade by now. And maybe even with a different sport, like you do with basketball. Different sport. We can find a different war. We can figure something out.

Like there's so many different permutations. It's so good that when you're rewatching this and you're just like, wow, how did they, did they just all look at around at each other and go, wow, this is so brilliant. Let's all just shake hands. So the premise, if you haven't seen the movie and if you haven't, I don't know what to tell you. You're really missing out. You should watch it. But I also don't know why you would be listening to this if you haven't listened to it.

We'll go through it anyway. The premise is they're in a P.O.W camp. The Nazis are evil. And somebody on the Nazi side decides, what if we had a soccer game? Steiner, he's just like, you know what? I'm kind of bored. It's 1943 or whatever, 1944. Let's just like, let's just kind of like, let's mix it up a little.

Yeah, let's have a real game. We'll have a crowd. Then it kind of, it snowballs a little. Now all of a sudden it's at a bigger stadium in Paris. Now it's like, oh, well, Michael Cain, who's the player manager, we'll get to some of the issues with him later. He's like, you know, I'd really need some players. You've got to go get me some good ones. And it turns in this all-star team.

And there's three things going on here, big picture. One is Stallone. This is catching Stallone right as he's about to go on his incredible run because he's got Rocky three the following year. And then we're off. That first blood, following year, same thing, 1982. We got Rocky 4. We have First Blood Part 2, Rambo, Cobra. It's just all happening for Stelon.

All culminating with Tango and Cash. Yeah, this is, it's not all happening yet for Stallone. You could argue, I'll just, spoiler alert, he did not win this movie. There's a lot of questions of whether this movie is better without him. But so we have the Stallone piece. We have the just great premise, old school. widescreen, John Houston directing, just all that, all that stuff. And then we have the soccer.

And you love this stuff. You're a historian. There's some good soccer players of this movie. There's no Georgia Chenalia. But we do have Pele, the most important soccer player, probably of all time. We have Bobby Moore. Top three, Bobby Moore, captain of the England national team when they won the World Cup in 66.

Dela is a spurs legend and just like an incredible showman. I think that... Wern a Roth? Yeah, I wanted to kind of start here. Should we make a rule that any sports movie needs to have at least 50% of its sport playing cast actual athletes? Yeah, I mean, some movies have obeyed that, right? Blue Chips. Yeah, Blue Chips.

I mean... Blue Chips took that very seriously. Yeah, and like, I think that... White Men Can't Jump did not. Well, this kind of goes back to the beginning of when we started doing this podcast, and it was the sports movie Hall of Fame, really. Like, we were talking about, you know, is it easier to teach actors to play sports than it is to get athletes to learn how to act? And I think that you could argue that there's probably, you could have had Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando in this movie, and I still think it would have had a lot of problems, you know, in terms of it's some of the logical conclusions that it makes.

Yeah. But I don't think that this movie is anything close to what it is if Pele and Ardele's and Moore aren't in it. if that last half hour isn't like a really compelling sporting event on screen. And this is why this movie became, this is one of the first rewatchables for me. This was on HBO for like three straight years from, I don't know, 1982 to 1984. And it's one of those movies where it's like, ah, there's 40, oh, they're going to break the goalie's arm. All right, I'm sticking with this. We're 10 minutes away for the game.

I'll just, I'll deal with the goalie broken arm. Let's just get to the game. And the actual game, to me, was like my favorite soccer, anything forever. Like really until probably, what was the World Cup when we had 94? Yeah, when it was here, the, when it was over. Yeah, yeah. When we finally started to have some of our own moments for this country and then the 99 women happened, all that stuff. But for me, like, I just victory and the cosmos were my two entries to soccer.

Izi Ardiles with the just lighten it up for the basically the second goal he's just single-handedly goes LeBron on the whole Nazi team and he does what he does what Paley says he's going to do yeah the ally I don't want to step on the rewatchable scene because I'm happy to do it again but their first goal I think is the best it's my favorite 40 seconds I think of any sports movie the way the music builds yeah Stallone gets kicked in the head we go, there's a counterattack. The way it's filmed, it's filmed by somebody who obviously really cared about soccer.

And it's just everything about it is realistic, that nothing about it seems staged at all. It's perfect. The cross is perfect. The music crescendo, all the guys jumping in the crowd. It's just perfect. It's a perfect sports movie scene. So we'll talk about this when we get to research,

but I would say that there is, you know, some of the motivations for making this movie. Like a lot of these guys were pretty much doing it either for a paycheck or to hang out with Pele or to do it for whatever reasons. But against all odds, Houston, who's sort of, you know, in the latter stages of his career directing,

and I don't know whether maybe this is his AD or his director of photography or whether he's simply just really like the sport, because he was a big sportsman. He shoots this soccer match in this incredible hybrid way that's like half like a TV show, like half the way you would have seen it on TV

with that sort of center the center camera panning up and down the field while the ball's in play with some really good close-up work and they know when Michael Kane cannot be shown with a ball at his feet. He can walk around and talk

and say bloody, but he cannot play sports, right? At one point he says, I'm gonna move to Forward. And it's like, you are? You're 230 pounds. I've rewatched the game part of this. He's not in it at all.

Eight times in the last two weeks. He is not on the field. Yeah, he points a couple times. There's a couple of him jogging. cut away, but there's a couple of shots overhead where you're like, wait, what number is he? Because, like, is he, like, the body double work that they must have had to do is just amazing. It's really smart. But they also need Michael Cain.

He's really good in this movie. They just had to figure out a way to cheat it so he wasn't there. So a couple things. I'm going to take everybody back to 1981. Pele was a god. I knew nothing about soccer as a little kid. Then the NASL starts in the late 70s. And we had the team end.

Shep messing was the goalie. Got into that a little bit. My dad took me to a game. And then summer 1980, after my parents got, there was, I don't even know if they were divorced. They were separated. I lived in Connecticut for the summer and the Cosmos were on. And Pele was retired by then.

I remember watching the Pele World of Sports when his retirement game, which was like, treated like Ali. But that Cosmos team was like an all-star team. And there ended up being a great documentary about them that I would encourage people to watch. What was that one called? I can't remember. But my point is the cosmos were a thing

and Pelae was the thing, even though he was way more famous around the world. He did matter in America, a country that didn't really totally care about soccer. And the fact that he was in this movie was the smartest move they made. It gave the movie a credibility that I just don't think

there's one other person on the planet. could have pulled off. Oh, no way. I mean, with the exception of Maradonna, maybe, or something like that, but, like, they, they basically- Maradano wasn't old enough yet, though. No, I mean, he was kind of, yeah, he was around, in 1981, it had to be Pele. I don't know who else it would have been. The thing that you're touching on, though, is that in that era, which is a little bit before my soccer watching time or quite a bit, but my dad was English and so I was, I grew up with it being part of, like, my childhood in some ways. And I played. But for the most part, until five, soccer channel came on, you couldn't really watch soccer when it wasn't World Cup. And so

you would hear about things happening or you would hear about big players or you would hear about Manchester United or something like that. But for the most part, it was all myth. Like, it was all just like you would, you would just like read about it or every once in a while you would get to see a highlight or something like you said on Why World of Sports. So the big, big players in soccer, at least for an American audience, were kind of like, they might as well be like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like, you didn't really see these guys actually get a chance to play your sports. But because you didn't get that firsthand experience, a lot of the mythology around them

became almost bigger than life. You know, and it's like when you watch Pele in Escape to Victory, I know it seems corny, but you're just kind of like, for some people, that might be the longest extended footage of Pele that they get to see. 100%. First 35 years of my life were people telling me soccer was going to take off. and it started in the late 70s. And it was like soccer's taken off.

When we go to a teamen game and there's like 10 people there, the Cosmos, they loaded that team. And that was an amazing team. That was a team that probably could have played against teams around the world. They weren't smart enough to figure out really how to do that back then. But by the early 80s, soccer was started. They'd expect the NASL is a classic, everything not to do when you're fledging professionally. They expanded way too fast.

they just did everything wrong. And then other leagues would then repeat all of their mistakes. But by the time this movie came out, it felt like soccer was failing in America again. You had all these kids playing. Then this movie comes out. It didn't even really do that well. It was they didn't make a ton of movies back then, but this movie was 63rd in 1981. It made $10 million.

Yeah. Yeah. And they probably, how many movies did they make? They made 112 movies total in 1981. But I'm telling you, this was a thing with the kids. And I remember I went to a birthday party, my friend Reese, and they got a copy of Victory. This was after it had come out.

We'd all seen it. And it was like one of the first, I don't know if it was a Laserdisc or VHS or whatever it was, or how they even got it. But we all watched Victory. And it was like, it was amazing. So this movie goes to HBO. And it's just on for three years. And that's when, you know, it took on its rewatchable thing.

What's interesting about it, though, is the story. Square TVs the way it was shot. It actually wasn't great as a soccer experience. Yeah, it was a lot of like real fast cameras and, you know, even like the penalty kick. I never even realized until I got the DVD, whatever year that was, that you see Warner Ross sink to the ground because when they had to do the camera move, Slice saves the penalty kick and the camera has to hone in on Slack because they don't have the room to show Warner Roth. But Warner Roth, like, does this great sink with like, oh, my God.

Yeah. I just, I'm going to get killed by the Nazis because I missed that kick. Yeah. Because a five-foot Italian guy just saved my kick. Caught my penalty kick. It's even worse. It was worse than saving it. But it's, so this movie's had a 40-year re-watch. And recently it was on NBC Sports Network because I think some game got canceled. And it was like, I'm, my buddy Gus and I, who have been friends for almost four decades, and this is one of our movies that we've joked about, watched a million times, like, just texting them, like, Victory's on. Let's go. I already own it on DVD. I already own it on Apple. I own it streaming in DVD. I'm like,

oh, Victory's on. You just have to watch it. Yeah, there's something about this movie that also, when it's on, you might get lucky and miss some of the more boring parts. Like, you might miss hatches sojourn to Paris. Oh, my God. That's a long 13 minutes. So yeah, that might be a time when you're going to make a peanut butter sandwich and then come back in time for the match. But yeah, it's definitely, it reminds me so much of, you know,

because Houston obviously has this long story career in Hollywood, directed the Maltese Falcon. But this movie is way closer to the Great Escape than it is an 80s movie, right? Like, it's definitely, the bones of this movie are very like 60s.

1965, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's fine with me because Great Escape is one of my, favorite movies that I can rewatch that movie any day of the week and you know, pick and choose the scenes I want to stay around for. But yeah, I mean,

like if you play, I think that World War II Prisoners is one of the most durable film setups, like, in maybe Hollywood history, at least in terms of like the dirty dozen, great escape, escape to victory. I'll

even go as far as Hart's War. I'll go up to Bruce Willis and Carl Colin Farrell, like into the through the 90s. Savian private, Ryan? Yeah. It keeps going and going. You're right.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like there's something wrong with the house. It's just like it's going to work. The further and further we get away from World War II and the fact that really there probably no Nazis even alive anymore, maybe like a couple. That's it. It's, we've lost some of the Nazis being the greatest movie villains we've ever had. We cover this of the Raiders of the Lost Dark Pot.

We'll just never do better than the Nazis. It's everything about it. it's just a win. And in this movie, they're handled perfectly. Like you have the swastkas are everywhere. They fix the game. They're fucking dirty as soccer players. They're shooting prisoners. They're bringing it all to the table.

You mentioned John Houston. 74 years old when he made this. So it was a little distance from the Maltese Falcon, Sierra Madre, Key Largo, asphalt jungle, African Queen. When does he make Fat City? Because Fat City, I think, in some ways is like, one of his last great ones. Yeah, that was early 70s, I think.

Okay. So then after this, he did A&E, which is just bizarre, under the volcano, Pritzie's Honor and the Dead, and he's done. So this is the fifth to last movie he made. It's unclear. I researched this. There's conflicting reports on whether he loved this movie or not. It doesn't sound like he did.

I think that everybody, one of the disturbing legacies of this movie for me, now that we have the internet and more research is pretty much everybody seems like they were out on Stallone. Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough be for you. Yeah, it's a tough one for me. It sounds like he had a tough couple opening weeks of training camp.

You know, maybe not like Cole Beasley tough, but just like he showed up and he was like, fuck soccer and fuck hanging out with you guys. I'm going to London and Paris every weekend. Yeah, and I don't really need to learn how to play goal. Yeah. But then Pele broke his finger and he was like, I guess I better take this seriously. Yeah, there was definitely a halves and halves not. So we had, for the pro footballers, Bobby Moore.

Yeah. Give us the 10-second bio of which one, Bobby Moore. I mean, to the extent that I can't. So Bobby Moore is like a hugely, hugely famous person in England because he led England to their sole World Cup victory over Germany in 1966, which is incidentally when my parents met. That's not nothing, FYI. Yeah, I mean, he was essentially David Ortiz. Essentially a god, yeah.

Yeah. Ozzy Ardiles. Yeah, big, big Spurs player was just sort of like one of the master showmen and stylists in football. Yeah. He translates the best because some of these guys who are the great players really look like they belong to the 60s and 70s version of great soccer players. Right. Obviously, it looks like you could have time machined him and put him on like Barcelona. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I was going to say that one of the things that this movie does pretty well is it splits the difference between making the football scene. pretty good, while also having them play somewhat like the way they would have been playing in the 40s. Because in between the 40s and the 80s, when they make this movie, is basically two or three revolutions in the sport. When soccer starts, it's like one village against another kicking a pumpkin, and it doesn't really have a lot of shape. But like, they get to the point where there's all this tactical stuff happening. And even they do the chalkboard where Michael Cain's like, You're going to go up here and then you're going to cross it. Don't dribble it.

Cross it. And then Pele is like, I got, I fucking got this. But yeah, I think that Ozzie Ardeal is like the bridge guy. He and Pele are the dudes when you watch them. You're like, oh, that's, that's Namar. That's messy. Whereas like everybody else is kind of like kick and rush. They're like kicking the ball, a lot of hard tackling, a lot of leg breakers.

Yeah, because if you were doing this as a basketball movie set in 1943, you're not having Ali Ups. Right. You're not having three point shots. It's set shots and a lot of movement and somebody clogged in the middle. So it's funny that our de-lis becomes kind of the bridge, as you said.

Yeah. All right, so you have him. Casimir's Deanna. Now we're starting to get into a little bit of above my pay grave. All right. He's a great Polish player apparently. Paul von Hempst.

Was he on Iax? Was he the Dutch guy? I think he was a big Dutch guy. Yeah, one of the first big Dutch guys. Mike Somerby? now so then they had a bunch of guys who were sort of like meat and potatoes English players like they had a bunch of dudes who played for Ipswich play in those. I was going to ask you about that. I did a big Ipswich Town deep dive. It's Twitch Town had a nice little run there in the

70s. Yeah. And now they're like level three. It's crazy because like in, you know, obviously in English football, there's promotion and relegation. So in, you know, the 70s you had like Nottingham Forrest was the best team in Europe for two years, and now they're barely in the second division. Werner Roth. He plays Bowman, right? Yeah, short a run. He's the guy who kicks the last punner kick for the Germans, but he was on the Cosmos. So I knew, the two guys I knew in this movie when I saw it were Pele and Werner Raith.

And then Pele was, you know, it was like Ali, Pele. That was basically the one-two punch for the 70s. for most famous people. Playing World Cups at all, like when you were growing up, or was that just, that was before your time? That was all Wild World of Sports. Yeah. I don't even, did they even televise the World Cup in America?

I have no idea. They must have. Ever remember watching it. But I remember all the Wide World Sports stuff. And then they would show Cosmos games because they kind of, they got behind Pele in the mid-70s because they needed, you know, they were looking for an Ali replacement. It was a big deal when he came to America.

I mean, sure. Yeah. You know. Michael Cain, this is a nice little run for him in the early. He had a nice little early 80s run. Dressed to Kill. De Palma. Big movie, controversial. Yeah. Has this?

He's the hand, which is one of my favorite just bonkers horror movies. I don't know where you're standing on the hand written by Oliver Stone. I don't think I've seen the hand. Loses his hand in a car accident and then starts having night. about it and the hand starts going around and killing people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Then he's in Death Trap a year after Victory. Death Trap was a big deal because he's in with Christopher Reeve and then there's a big reveal in that movie. That was a huge deal in the 80s. But then it's off. And Michael Cain, he ends up wins two Oscars. So I'm in a couple times. Has a whole run. But victory, I feel like, was part of that run.

Which Jaws is he in? Is he in three? We don't talk about Jaws 3. That's the one on the island, right? Jaws 2 we talk about. Yeah. Jaws 2 is now like incredibly underrated. Jaws 3, we don't acknowledge.

$10 million budget made $27 million. $10 million budget made $27 million ultimately because it did well internationally. You know, there's this great sports movie run here, which starts with the longest. yard ironically. And we've, we've discussed it in the past because you get the bad news bears, you get Rocky, start getting some sequels. You have all the great weird basketball movies from the late 70s, fast break one-on-one, fish that save Pittsburgh. You start getting like the quirky indie movies, like inside moves, which you refuse to watch. You've known I've asked you

five times. You have all those. You're breaking away. Yeah. Slapshot's like 77, right? Slap shot. You got every sport kind of gets their movie. And soccer was the last one basically standing that didn't get one. Even wrestling got one. All the marbles with Peter Fock happened. We have a done slap shot. It's saving it. So, you know, we want to get to 500.

It could be next year. I hope so. I think it's the 45th anniversary next year. It could happen. I mean, greatest hockey movie of all time. And that's the thing with victory. It's the greatest soccer movie of all time. It's not close.

there's been some okay ones since. Bend it like Beckham to me is the most overrated one because they just, they did the classic thing where they cast the actor instead of the athlete. And the girl who's the lead is just not a soccer player. And they have to do like these, it's like the Michael Kane situation again. The Damned United was great. Yeah, I like that.

That's probably my favorite one of the last 12. What are the ones that we have? Well, I'm looking forward to the one that's coming out later this year called Next Goal Wins, which is Tyco Waititi's movie. with Michael Fastbender, which is supposed to be, like, it looks like it will be a lot of fun, but it's definitely,

there are a lot of movies where it's like, it only came out in England, you know, and like some British people like it, but it just, soccer movies tend to not make a big impact over here. I mean, obviously,

it's just still, it's probably still like the fourth or fifth most popular sport in the state, so you don't see a lot of them. There's like, you know, what's the ladybugs? Is that the, they make kids soccer movies,

but they don't make, they don't make, like the adult ones. They made kicking and screaming, the Will Ferrell movie, but there's just not a lot of like, oh, here's a movie about like the Manchester United team in the 50s or something like that. Yeah, and they always

they throw in soccer. One of my obsessions is bad soccer in like TV movies or TV shows or even movies where it's like there's some horror movie and it's like the dad's got to go to his kid's soccer game and they'll have just like this chaotic

soccer game and they'll do close-ups to the kid who obviously can't play. And then there'd be some breakaway where the other kids are just standing around. You see those all the time. That would be a great Twitter account. Just like horrible soccer and horrible soccer that was actually filmed.

This is one of the reasons I love victories. The soccer actually made me like soccer more. Yeah. It was like, where can I find more of this? I love this. Did you ever show the soccer match to Zoe? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I bought this movie on streaming. so we could watch it on an airplane, I downloaded it on an Apple. We were flying somewhere, and I made her watch it when she was getting into soccer and I was six.

And I'd forgotten how slow the first hour and a half was. So there was a lot of like, just wait, just wait, just wait until they get there. That is the thing with this movie is that there are some rewatchables where we're like,

yeah, the last 20 minutes is a little stupid or there's that slow part. This is like actually a pretty slow 90 minutes until the soccer match. Can we bring in producer Craig for one second? Yeah. I was really worried. worried about this one for you because, you know, you're in the TikTok generation.

That's right. Yeah. I was just worried that you were going to quit in the first 90 minutes, but you actually liked this movie. I just skipped to 90 minutes in my next day. He read online. That's what to do. Was it too slow for you, though? No, I mean, you kind of warned me. So I was into it. You know, I knew it was going to end really well. So it's always better to buy in when the end pays off. Okay. All right, that makes me feel better. Thanks, Craig. All right, we're going to do the categories. But first, today's most rewatchable scene,

which is going to be a very interesting category today because this movie has 30 straight minutes of rewatchability, and we're going to have to narrow it down. But today's most rewatchable scene is presented by Blue Moon. Blue Moon on a mission to bring some brightness to your life. And if you need a little brightness these days, a rewatchable series or some sequels are perfect. Revisited a trilogy, maybe an entire sentence.

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Ale. Most rewatchable scenes. All right. Listen, the end's going to win. But we'll do, we'll throw in a couple from the first 90 minutes.

I like the first Kobe von Steiner's scene. Yeah. The very first one where they talk to each other or the first negotiation that they do. I like the first one, but I also like the second one. So maybe we team those up. But I like when he's watching the soccer and there's a little cat and mouse going on. Can I have my ball back general? Right. The hatch has to come in. But they're trying to establish this good Nazi theme, which we'll get into it in a second. And then he does the, Kane's like, I need more players. And he's like, oh, make a list, Captain.

I'll see what I can do. No, the negotiation. So when they first, he's like, what if we had a friendly? Like, what if we could do, we could, like, settle the war with a match, like a soccer match? And what if, like, we could show people, like, we're all humans. And Kane's just like, absolutely not. What sort of team? Are there any good?

I haven't chosen a team. It's just an idea. It's not an order. You can't make us play. No. it's a challenge no feel washer

complete washer why look at him right yeah you're murdering millions of people I don't think a soccer match but no he's not even like that

he's not objecting to it on moral grounds he's just like I don't have like they don't have good enough like boots yeah true he's like I need better sneakers has that he been invented yet it's shocking too because

Kane's character Kobe Kobe is just like forget like the treatment of all other prisoners. What's most important is that like the soccer players get beer. Yeah. Get us resources. Keep everybody else in cages. Yeah.

We want cool, cool shirts, but everybody else can be just. Where are jerseys? I told you large, not medium. I like it short, but the first big training sequence

yeah, leading to Pele grabbing the chalk. Which means that I just like good with this. cool I have to give me ball here I do

these these these these these these go easy

easy which is I just anytime Pele gets to cook in this movie I'm all in

I just love it so much Pele being from Trinidad and it's just like oh I oh my gosh

yeah I wonder they had to do it that way because of the war they couldn't have said he was from Brazil

it would have made no sense why he was in POW camp but Even though Sylvester Stallone is like, yeah, I'm in the Canadian Air Force. Right, right. I don't have another rewatchable scene until we get to the last 30 minutes.

And then I have five. So five of my eight come in the last 30 minutes. We mentioned earlier, Pellet gets, it's the game starting to get chippy. And it's like, all right, please don't let anything happen to Paley. Right. And Pele just gets demolished. I'm going to assume like four broken ribs. I think a bunch of broken ribs and possibly a dislocated shoulder,

but he's basically holding his ribs together for when he comes back on. Yeah. So then Michael Cain's like, all right, we're going to go down a guy. Pele starts walking off. They're playing the music. And he does the turnaround to look in the field. And it's like, It's like, oh, man, they hurt Paley.

And then that leads to across. Stallone gets kicked in the face. It's all blurry and the counterattack, which I think that minute is, I would put that up against any minute in a sports movie. It's so good. Every piece of it is just lights out. So that's going to end up being my pick.

I like when they go in the tunnel, the famous scene. This might be my pick, actually. I haven't decided it. They go under, Hatch's like, what do you mean? We're getting on here. You guys have no chance.

Yeah. And then one guy, the guy, the Scottish guy. I can't remember it's like Alan Brazil or somebody. It's like, but the Scottish guy's like,

we can win this. Yeah, we can win this. We're down, we're down a guy, we're down three goals. We got this. And Michael Kahn's like, what do you mean?

We can win. What he made? What? Who said that? And Hatch is ready to go. And then Pele. comes in. Craig, just play the Pele speech. Please, Hart.

That game means a lot to us. You know that. You must go back. Let's go. We can win. Come on. Hart. If you run now, we lose more than a game.

Please, Hatch. Please, Hatch. That game means a lot to us. You know that. We must go back. I wanted to ask you about this. Well, no, I'll save this question for later. I'll save this question for later.

All right. Next we'll see the next two allies goals in a row. Amazing. Are D-Less, and then the third goal in the crowd and Stallone's just jumping up and down. It's actually really good. It really seems like they were playing the actual game. Okay, and let's just know.

These guys are down to 10 men, which usually is, like, I think that there are some examples in football. I mean, like in champions, there's always these big comebacks now. And there have been some examples where, you know, a short-handed team, a team that's down to 10 men, like Inter against Barcelona back a bunch of years ago. I think Inter was down 10 men, but still held Barcelona to a draw or something like that. Nobody who has 10 men scores three on-answered goals. Like that never, ever, ever happened.

No, it was four. And then five, except the disallowed one. They went five straight. They went to VAR, the German VAR. Unbelievable. All right. So those two are awesome. And then the Pelea bicycle kick.

Peleae comes back in. Yeah. I must play. Holding his ribs. Yeah. Yeah. He's holding his ribs together in his body. Not sure if FIFA allows you to take 60 minutes off the game. Like I think at a certain point, it's either like bring a guy on or not.

Right. I think that there's a rule against like my guy twisted his ankle. He's just going to go hang out on the sidelines for the next 45 minutes. I think they also have rules. rules about just hauling off and punching somebody in the ribs over and over again when they have the ball. Yeah, there's some rules that are violated. Sets up the cross and the bicycle kick and then the good Nazi. He just appreciates good soccer. He had to stand up. He's like, you know what? Let's put the war. Let's put all the genocide behind us. Great bicycle kick stands up. He definitely

murdered right after the game. And then the penalty stop and the escape at the end, which was I'd love to know who thought of that idea. It's like, so Hatchell stop it, they'll win the game, and then what happens? And they're like, oh, well, then they'll escape in their shower. No, no. What if everyone charges the field? Rush the field, yeah. And they put their clothes on the guys and everyone escapes.

And they say, yeah, write that down. Type that up. It's fucking perfect. I love it. I also love that, like, it's like the assumption is that the Germans would just be befuddled and that they wouldn't just start shooting everybody. Yeah. I didn't know whether that was in nitpicks or,

probably unanswerable questions, but I just feel like they're opening fire on these people. There's at least, there's at least 500 people who aren't escaping. All right. So my most rewatchable scene, I love Pele getting hurt through the first Allies goal is my favorite minute of the movie. What do you have? Yeah, I'm going to go with that. I think the Ardele's goal is my favorite goal in the movie. But I think that whole segment when they start to come back and then it culminates for me with Michael Cain walking back into the locker room at half time. And the one guy has like a compound fracture in his leg. And Paley can't fucking breathe.

He's got a collapse lung. And Michael Cain's like, we school to go. We scorn to go. With that full one, but we got one. That guy's like thumbs up. Legs in seven places. It's like Alex Smith. All right.

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Bring some brightness to your life. Celebrate responsibly. Blue Moon Brewing Company Golden, Colorado, ale. All right. What's age the best? The music. Bill Conti, the goat. The music's... I think this might be number one for me

for sports movie music. Rocky? Yeah, I think so. I think it is. Because it's got a couple different ones. It's got the Pele just got hurt, the kind of dire. It's got the allies that are making it run. It's got the celebration music. It's just, it's like that. I like the evil music where it's like Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Great stuff. I think it's number one.

Speaking of music, right before the penalty kick, when they sing, I think it's the French national anthem, right? What do they sing? What does the crowd sing? You know what? I was actually confused about that. Let me see if I can figure that out. I don't know if it's a...

I'm pretty sure it's the French national anthem. and they sing the whole song and it's fucking awesome and they got the whole arena of extras to do it and it's like just goosebumps it's really good I love that part the singing in the soccer stadium

stuff is incredible yeah like just in general like you can when you get a chance to if you ever get a chance to go to a game over there it's just amazing I've watched this movie so many times but I don't understand the language

but I still sing along with it I just love it. The crooked referee. Yeah. Just knew, you know, you knew he was in the bag. I like movies with crooked referees. I mean, if you're going to referee a game for Nazis, you're probably not, you know, you're probably not going to call it as you see it.

You're going to call it as they see it. He swings three goals. The allies play down a guy for. I don't know, 70 minutes, and they still pull off a tie. Incredible stuff. The widescreen has aged the best. Really important for this movie. The widescreen, the HD, this movie, we say this so many times with different movies

than the rewatchables, but this is a top five, thank God for HD and widescreen. It just completely reinvented this movie in so many different ways. This is a little under the radar, and I'm not even positive. You noticed this, but the team called themselves Prisoner FC. Did they? You see that? No. Yeah. Oh, I love that.

I noticed it like the 57th screening. But yeah, it says Prisoner F.C. I was like, just wear the jerseys. Where are the Prisoner F.C. jerseys? I would fucking wear those. They should have the Allies jerseys, Prisoners FC. Somebody should be on that. Somebody should making it.

Pele's scissor kick move on Sly and Practice. Amazing. Amazing. The goal that Paley scores at the end of the match is He does a full bicycle kick. But other than that, it's very close to the goal that Zadon scored in the Champions League against Bayer Leverkusen, where it was like up in the air. And then he fucking just drilled it with a scissor kick. It was just, I wish, like, it's just an amazing moment.

Morwood's age the best. P.O.W. Camps, you hit it earlier. Just always, always a killer premise for whatever action movie, just the concept of we got to get out of here. Yeah. But the best part is always. if you have that band of prisoner that's like the British officers who have like completely domesticated

the prisoner camp and walking around wearing like cool sweaters and smoking pipes and gardening. Those guys are the best. You've got to have them in the prisoner camp. 100,000 percent.

Colonel Waldron. Oh yeah. The closing credits. With all the players. Yeah. I always used to watch in the 80s when this was on HBO. And I would always like to see the guys

and they would have, they'd say each guy's name with their country. So it was like, Sylvester Stallone, United States. It was great. But learning where all these guys were, and there was no internet. So it was like all I knew about these guys were. Yeah, you could just write their names down and look for the future. Yeah, that's it. It's like, all right, I guess that's who that was.

And then the final, what's the age of best mentioned this earlier, but the whole concept of the good Nazi that they pulled this off. Yeah. That these Nazis, these despicable people, He's a recurring character. He shows up, like, in Great Escape, there's, like, the nicer Nazi, you know, like, there's, like, a trope of, like, having a Nazi who, like, and he's necessary for the drama because you have to have somebody communicating to those guys and sort of blindly helping them,

but yeah. He really just loves soccer. He just loves the game. More than this war we're fighting, more than all these awful beliefs we have, soccer is the thing that unites us and he's really like genuinely disappointed by the officiating but then as the game kicks in in the second half

it was what he wanted. What he really wanted was an escape from the horrors of the war and the side that he was on which he realized was reprehensible and this game allowed him to escape for two hours. Well if you're that guy how come you're not managing how come you're not like on the field like calling the shots that's what I don't understand. Yeah or resign.

Come on Von Steiner. Just just just leave. Try to become... Escape with them, yeah. Yeah, become like a manager on the German team. The announcer is really good too. I think he does a good job.

The goal has been disallowed. Listen to the crowd! And he turns the radio on. That guy's really good. What else do you have for one stage the best? Beating Nazis at anything. Like, I love when there is an opportunity, whether it's to like steal archaeological finds back from Nazis,

steal great art back from Nazis, just anything that involves, like, kind of like taking it to the Nazis, on like any kind of... Yeah, exactly. Getting the diamonds back. Absolutely. So beating the Nazis,

but my what stage is best is Conti's score. Well, I forgot to mention with Stallone. Stallone does the rare within the span of five years ends the Cold War and beats the Nazis

in two different sports movies, which is really like, I don't, nobody's topping that. The two biggest villains we've ever had. We're all just looking up to Stallone

on the sports movie Pantheon. I'm with you, though. I think Conti's score. And our D-LAS's goal still... I mean, all the soccer is just great. That feels so 2021. All of those moves does not feel like they would have happened in 1943.

Right. Pele, too, is age the best just because, you know, it's not like people are sitting around watching World Cup highlights of Pele. You can go on YouTube and watch them. There was a movie about him that was okay. Documentary about him that was okay. Victory is kind of... It's his testament.

The Pele legacy. It was the thing that, you know, the bicycle kick the whole thing. With stage the worst, speaking of Pele, the bald patch thing he's got going on his head, I don't understand what was going on with that. Like,

and you saw it a couple times, it almost looked like a toupee. Uh-huh. You're not with me on this? No, I didn't notice. There was a couple times he rolled over and it was like this weight bald patch, and it was like,

couldn't they get in the LeBron spray and just sprayed it on the back? It was a little bit younger. I don't know. They never understood that. Morwood's stage the worst. Changing the title from escape to victory. To escape, right?

Or no, to victory, to victory. Just to victory. Yeah. Everyone being really impressed by Pele's juggling? Well, in 1940, whatever, it would have been like mind-blowing. Really? Yeah. Yes.

Are we sure? Yes. Okay. Ipswich Town. Yeah. Kind of peaked right here for, Switchdown. Fallen on hard times.

Michael Cain. So you don't think it's a good. Not the actor. Not the actor. Okay. The soccer player. The athlete. Who knows?

He does not play soccer in this movie by any means. So, this is what the internet says. He was a decent soccer player, but at his age, he was having a lot of issues with his legs. So they had to get a stunt person, or a stunt soccer player, Kevin Beattie, to play all of the scenes where it looked like Michael Kane's running. Our D-List did not like it. He said they asked him out of soccer skills.

There was an article recently where they interviewed him and he said, quote, awful and he couldn't even run 20 yards. So, tough one. Then there's a whole like, we'll get to some of the soccer stuff. I have another section for him. Stallone's goal

tending, goalkeeping. Goalkeeping. Pretty tough. Pretty tough. I would say that just Stallone's role on the team is pretty fluid. Like he starts out, he's like the hyperactive American who's tackling guys, like real football tackling. Then he's like, I want to be the physical trainer of this team and work on guys and like get them in shape, which I guess Stallone's in shape, but it is a sort of like, you know, it's like

James Woods in any given Sunday. You're like, is this guy really qualified to be the team's doctor? Yeah, they skip over that scene where he talks Michael Cain. into it. Yeah. Michael Kane throws his bag out the door. He comes back in. But yeah, Stallone's keeping is tough.

I guess my question is, does it matter for the movie, or does it only matter to weirdos like us? That Stallone is bad at goalkeeping? Not only that he's bad, but it's just so obvious that they like furiously trained him right before they started filming the movie to at least know how to like do a couple things. So here's the counter to that, is that they do have another keeper whose arm they break on purpose to get hatch into the game. So like, I don't think that they are saying that he's good at being a keeper. And then that whole run up to the match when he's like, Colby, where do I stand for the corner? Where do I stand for the corner? Is hilarious because he keeps asking him that. But the fact that he then gets good enough to to hold off the Germans for 75 minutes, to hold off the Germans for the second half and then saves a, uh, saves a penalty kick from probably one of like the 40 best players in the world is highly unlikely.

Highly unlikely. Yes. I think if I had to do this movie over again, there's a lot of things I would do differently, including another what's age of worse for me. No really good scrimmage scene or practice scene or like just take away the 13 minutes that we have to spend with Sly when he goes to meet the French lady. Give me like three minutes where they finally have good equipment and there's a scrimmage seen you have all these soccer players what are you doing such a no-brainer or some sort of like hey we got

to see let's let's see how we're let's see where we are i would like to expect more time with some other players on the team like that is the one thing that this movie as world war two movie does poorly is that like the best part of the dirty dozen and the great escape is getting to know all the different guys whereas in escape to victory you really only get to know cane and stilone and then the colonel it's a mistake the somebody who is a the movie, John Work, he said, he repeated the story that it seems like it's a real story that he wanted John Houston to have the goal, they score the winning goal. That Stallone did.

And John Hark was like, you're the goalkeeper, you can't do it. But they did try to figure out, like, could there be a corner kick situation where he comes up? Yeah. So unclear if this is true or not, but apparently they did try to see if they could film that and he couldn't they couldn't figure it out so then they did the um the penalties and john wark said um in rehearsals six takes before he could get even near one and then finally got the one that he did maybe that's why he's so excited after he saves it yeah paylay comes jumping in with his

seven broken ribs which i also enjoy um that's what's aged the worst to me is palay holding his ribs jumping up it's like you're the greatest athlete of all time you got to couldn't couldn't they have cut to another look for him. The bicycle kick, so apparently they had to do some work with this one as well. This guy named Sevel was the German goalie, and he said he basically tried to save it, so it would look more realistic.

But they couldn't get the wide shot of him doing it. They had to get everything but the actual bicycle kick. Right. And then, oh, hatches escape. It's tough. It's a tough subplot to this movie. I, I, like, the whole sojourned to Paris, the whole experience there. And like, I don't really-

You could literally cut off it. I don't know if you need it at all. Yeah. Like, you could have just had him be the goalie of the team. Like, they could, the whole thing where they're like, we need you to go to Paris, to talk to the French resistance, to find out if they would be over. to getting these guys out. They could have just said, like, yeah,

the French resistance got in touch with London. They're down to get us out of there, if possible. It's like they wanted to introduce the female because they were worried they didn't have a female character. Right. And then they're like, hey, you got to get captured. He's like, all right. But we don't even see him get captured.

The next scene, he's just in a car driving back. It's really bad. It's really bad. I like his escape from the actual camp, like when he climbs up out of the showers and stuff. But I like that too. But once he gets to France, it's just into France. It's sort of stupid.

I don't know why they did that. One other, this is age the worst just for me because I wish I never read this because I've been thinking about it for ever since I read it. Russell Osmond, who's one of the guys in the movie, he's the, he's the, he's the, hey, we can win this. He's that guy. Yeah, yeah. Apparently he kept everything.

So he has the whole Allied kit. He has the jersey and the shorts. He has the boots. He has a sign ball and he has a director's chair. And my point is put that stuff in an internet auction because I'm ready. I'm right here. I'm taking it all down. Five for one sale.

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thing what ifs. I thought I'd find more for this. I had a hard time finding any, yeah. Roger Moore considering being John Colby, I thought was an interesting one. Yeah. I like Kane better though. I mean, in general, I like Michael,

I go Michael Kane over Roger Moore. Who is John Colby now if this movie's being made right now? Who would you want? It's got to be like basically... They have to be able to play soccer. It has to be like a more working man's Colin Firth.

Okay. Apparently Lloyd Bridges and Clint Eastwood were circling this at some point. Let's talk about the Clint part. What would you say to Clint Eastwood as Hatch? It's just a completely different movie. He's way cooler. He looks way more like a goalkeeper. There's no comic relief at all.

I don't think he would have been cool with breaking the dumb Irish goalie's arm. And the hate crime against the Irish that that would. It was, it's like, let's convince the Irish guy. It's like, why are the Irish? You always have to take a beat here? I'm 25% Irish. I'm a lot of the sense. I think Clint would have probably said, make him, he'll stay as the trainer, but he's

the backup goalie, and that's how they keep him on. And then you have the Irish goalie actually break the arm during the game is such a better way to. But having like an amazing match until that. Yeah, great save. And then Balman kicks his arm and breaks it. Yeah. Classic Belman.

Yeah. Fucking Balman. What a dick. Best that guy, aka the Joey Pants of a word. I don't even know what these guys' names are, but the two guys who help play in the escape,

they're sitting in the crowd. Amadu? You talk about those two dudes, the one guy who's got the glasses who he just does this every 10 minutes, he puts his hand in his face. I don't even know what those guys' names are, but anytime I've ever seen them and anything else,

I'll be like, oh, the guys from victory. So the only other guy that I had for this was Maurice Roves, who's the Scottish officer, who's like, you know, the four or five officers in the prison camp. Yeah. And this guy would go on

to get his beating heart cut out by Magua in Last the Mohicans. Oh. That's the winner. That's great. Magua. The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word

for best overacting or most overacting, Slice Stallone. Yeah. It's not even a question. Yeah. where he's chasing Michael Cain around the camp to be like, I don't even want to play on your stinking team.

You can shove that team up to, you're like, you got it, Colby? I don't need you or your football team anymore. You got it? I don't need this aggravation, Colby. It's like, fly. This isn't Paradise Alley, too. You're in a real movie here.

Chad Houston's the director. It's just not great. It's not a great look for him. The Judd Nelson Award for the person who seems like they're in a different movie. This obviously has to go to the French girlfriend. Oh my God. There's this whole detour where it's like this 1981 Donald Sutherland International Romance. It's like, what movie are we in?

And she's like really mad because every time she helps somebody, they disappear, but she stays in. And then he's like, I'm an orphan. I'm, you know, like nobody loves me. So I'm going to be there for you. It's just bad. Dionne Waiter's Award. Our nominees, is Pele eligible or no? Oh, I think so.

Yeah. He's only in a couple of scenes. Pele, Ardiles, the German announcer played by Anton Differing. And Werner Roth. Those are four. I'm going to go Different.

Okay? Yeah. You go to differing with for Dionne Waiters. I don't feel like Paley is eligible. I think, okay, let's take Paley out. He feels too important in the movie. Yeah, I think the German announcer wins it.

Oh, what a shame that the Allies had to resort to those tactics. Fuck you. It's a bad call. Recasting couch. I'm really happy. We should recut escape to victory, but with Gus Johnson and Akim to leave doing the commentary. Hatch

in Keith, he's in the goal. Oh, he saved it. A bicycle kick. Recasting couch. Fernandez. recasting couch. This saves our 13-minute slide trip to France.

We get rid of the actress, Carol Loret. Sorry, Carol. Sorry, Carol. You're very attractive, but not much else is going on there. Jacqueline Bissette, coming right in,

off the top rope. It's a 13-minute Jackie Bissette cameo, the most beautiful woman in the world. Now I'm invested. We're in France with Jackie Bissette for 13 minutes. But then you get mad when the match starts. You're like, oh, my God, how could you leave Jacqueline Bisset? But that's what you have to do.

You have to have something where it's like this guy should be, it should be like a question as to whether or not he's going to go back and play. Yeah. Half-ass internet research. So this was kind of loosely based on this 1962 Hungarian film drama that the English transition is two half times in hell. The actual name. Why have we not?

Why is there not another movie called two half times? This is going to be the 503 watchable. We're going to do Ket Felito Apocoban. That was the Hungarian name for it. But so it was about this kind of discredited story about a death match where this team defeated German soldiers in the Ukraine. And according to the now discredited part, they were all shot right after the game. The ultimate loser leaves town match. Right.

in the real story is the Ukraine team played a bunch of different German teams in some friendlies and then four were killed after, but it was way after. But anyway, it was loosely based is the right way to say. Gordon Banks, your guy,

1966 English goalie. He was the Slyze Stallone Gold Tending coach. Yeah. Yeah. And somebody named Alan Thatcher was involved as well. So they made Pelae's character from Trinidad because the Brazilians did not join the war until 1943. And this movie is early, Germany is just occupied France, 1941. They can't do it. And then Aziardiles, who's from Argentina in real life, they basically don't say what country is from in the movie. Smart. They're like, Ozzie, just cook. Don't worry about what country is. Just cook. Bill Conte used some of the movie in here from in The Right Stuff as well. Stallone started training in soccer on weekends off

they're in the filming in Nighthawks. What a run. Yeah. You know where I stand on Nighthawks. I love that with incredible beard. But he lost 40 pounds. He realized he needed to look like a prisoner of war. So his goal was to look more like an Olympic boxer.

Yeah. So he lost 40 pounds. And then put it, that's why he, he looked so great in Rocky 3 because he was skinny from Rocky from victory and then Rocky the three was next. So he put he put on some muscle but was still thin. So Asiardiles, he said he now he was a World Cup winner for Argentina in 1978. Did a whole bunch of other stuff. Really well renowned. I would say who's the equivalent of him now? Namar. I would yeah, he's probably a little bit more on the level of like,

I don't know. He would be like the second tier, I think. Below, you know, like below Namar. Okay. Notch below Namer. Yeah. He said this was his greatest ever sporty moment being in this movie. I know.

He was like, I couldn't believe it. Like, a lot of the guys who played in this, like the athletes who were in this movie were like, this is the best summer of my life. We forgot to mention Holland's Co-Prince is also in this movie. Stallone decided not to have a body double for the soccer scenes. Ended up separating a shoulder and breaking a finger, kept it going. And then the stadium, which is supposed to be in Paris,

was actually Budapest's MTK Stadium in Hungary. That's supposed to be La Colom Stadium in Paris, I guess. Apex Mountain. Stallone, no way. Pele, no. Michael Kane, no. Ipswich Town, I feel like. yes. I think if Switchtown's got a couple of trophies, but they really, they really

repped in this movie. They really did a good job. The trophies and then leading right into this, and I think it's just a great run for them. Uh, Warren Roth, probably not. John Houston, no. Soccer? No. Ozier-D. Lace, I'm still going with the 1978 World Cup. Dobermans? No. Doberman performing in this movie, but no. Yeah, I think there are some other World War II movies where Dobermans really showed out. Yeah, the Dobermans, man. Fucking frightening every time.

How about two-man sit-ups? These are really good. I don't know if I've seen them done better in a movie. It's maybe Apex Mountain for old-school calisthenics. For just, like, jog it out, do a couple of squats, you know, no cardio. Yeah. No question. Good Nazis?

Is there a better good Nazi performance? There's a couple of pretty nice ones in Great Escape where they're like, why did you come to fight this war? you know, like, real, like, I'm going with Van Sido. Von Sido, not Apex Mountain for him, but he's great.

He's got some Ingmar Bergman joints that I think are pretty big. Can I go Apex Mountain for the word bloody? Michael Kane says the word bloody in this movie the way, like, they say the word fucking Wolf of Wall Street. Like, he's just like, bloody boots and these bloody bowls

and these bloody, it's just, it's great. All right, we're going to pick some nits. This is going to be the most important part of the podcast, but we need a break for this. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com and to your license plate or VIN and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust. Like your offer? Accept it. Schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com.

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Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. All right. We're going to do some picket. I've been waiting for this for so long that for some reason my dog Murph just decided to jump into the Zoom. He wants to witness greatness. This movie, I don't know if this movie has an unusual amount of picking nits. or I've just seen it so many times.

You just notice stuff the more and more times you've seen it. But we'll go in no particular order. Hatch agrees to get recaptured. He's out. What does he care about? Anybody else at that point? I'm out. He doesn't have a personal relationship with those guys,

doesn't know how to play the sport and is home free in France. Done. Yeah. Even met a girl. He's out. The way he's set up as a character, he should just be gone.

We never see him again. Go to Switzerland, go to Spain, do whatever you got to do. Not to mention, how did the fuck did he escape? Was it that easy? No, I mean, that's like the whole,

but I, like, they do the whole thing with like him waiting by the side of the road and watching like the, like the German officer's house. It's just like interminable.

Yeah, it's rough. The Irish goalie. This might be my number one sports movie nitpick ever. Is it being like, go ahead and break my arm? Yeah, they're going to go play this game. He's been training for it for two months.

They need him for the game. They have no other goalie. Michael Kane comes to him with the offer. Hey, all of us are going to escape. We're going to break your arm and you're going to stay here. Which is why I just think this is a movie made. John Houston was he English or American? He's American.

Well, obviously hates the Irish. because he tried to get back to him with the dead because he adapted the James Joyce story but yeah he just complete disrespect for the Irish or it's like the dumb Irish guy yeah making a clean break Skipper it's like are you fucking kidding me

so I think no you're not breaking my arm the one thing that we're supposed to remember is that in those POW camps in World War II is that it was the British there's like sworn duty to try to escape all the time and that they did have a somewhat selfless attitude about like the most important thing is to help people escape and it's the many over the few here. That being said, couldn't they just be like, hey, you know, Patrick, tell them you have a cold or tell them you have like, you know,

whooping cough or something? Like, why didn't they have to break his arm? Tell them you have a torn ACL. You can't walk on your leg. I don't think Nazis recognized ACL injuries. It's just unbelievable. And why couldn't they have figured out a way to just get Sly to come anyway? And then on top of it, they let Sly go to the game. He's just escaped. Then he's been captured, come back. And they're like, oh, they have another goal. If you're starting keeper broke his arm. I guess we have to send this life risk. Send this guy who just escaped who clearly was planning something. That would have been amazing if Fonsider had been like, we're getting Dr. Richard Anderson for a second opinion on this guy's arm. Yeah. Making a clean one, Skipper.

escape to victory too is just that fucking guy in his arms like waiting out the rest of the war yeah just like oh I heard me tired he said fuck you I just it just my god Stallone's there's some goalkeeping stuff with Stallone that's just unbelievable

what are his slide tackles does any other goalie ever done that in the game so to the movie's credit I think that he is critiqued for coming off his line a lot, which is, you know, the whole thing is the goal you're supposed to stay on your line until you absolutely have to come off. And Kane is always like, stay on your bloody loin. But Stallone is basically... Hey, Hatch! Stand your bloody line! He's basically playing rugby out there.

It's pretty bad. Pele being from Trinidad, it feels like a violation. I don't know. I don't know enough about the Trinidad, Brazil, how realistic that was, but it just seems, I don't know. If Artilis is from some random country, like, Pele could have been to, yeah. We talked about this earlier. It's more than it's mentioning again.

They're down for nothing. They're down a guy and they proceed to score the next four goals, and then a fifth one that's disallowed. And Stallone throws a shutout for the last 75 minutes of the game. Yeah, even though he's been concussed.

He's been concussed and doesn't know where to stand on a corner kick and thinks you should slide, slide tackle, balls in traffic. But they somehow pulled that off. Stallone catches the penalty kick. How many penalty kicks have been caught that you've seen in a soccer game? Few. Very few get caught. Also, like, at that level. They would have to be right to you.

Those are professional players. Like, the whole point is that these are guys who would. have been playing for Germany had there not been a war on. So that guy is like essentially the equivalent of like Harry Kane kicking a ball at Sylvester Stallone right now. It's rough. It's great. I didn't know any better when I saw it when I was 11. But I'm pretty sure they could have just deflected it. Right. I'm pretty sure he could have that and tipped it with his left hand. Yeah, he's just got to tip it out out of balance because if it gets it comes back like the German player could have just tapped it in.

Can we talk a little bit about Stallone's method of trying to get on the team in the beginning? Because, like, my mid-pick. How horrible his soccer is? Well, no, just him running around and being like, Colby, Colby, put me on the team, put me on the team. And then, like, tackling guys.

Like, there's no way that Hatch doesn't get private piled in that camp. Yeah, you're right. You're right. They would have done something to him. Yeah, Private Piles a good analogy. I like that one.

Because he was going to fuck the game up for them. Yeah. He's such a fly in the ointment the entire time. Another picky knit. We send all of these aging past their prime players to the game.

Oh, no, I'm thinking of the U.S. women's team at the Olympics. My bad. My bad. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was thinking of the team that had the 39-year-old striker. and the other striker who hasn't been good for four years and the bunch of midfielder's who can't do anything

and then we don't score in three of the five games. I got my soccer teams confused. My bad. I'm glad you buried this take in our 105. By bad. We're not allowed to criticize the woman's soccer team ever for any reason. But yeah, great stuff. We should have said an Olympic team of just like Carmelo and Dwight Howard

and that should have been our basketball team because it would have married this U.S. team. I mean, we are the best women's soccer of the world. We obviously haven't produced any players under 30 except for Crystal Dunn in the last 10 years. Nobody else capable. Rose LaValle is under 30. Yeah.

Who is? Rose LaVelle is under 30. Was she on the team? Yeah, she scored the penalty the other day. No, I'm kidding. She could have done a little more. Outrageous. And then the defenders are all 36, 35.

The fuck. You know how many good young soccer players we have? What are they doing? This is an Avengers movie where it's like, we're bringing back Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey again. Put the best players of the team. Sorry. Another nitpick.

I think the Nazis cancel the game after Hatch escapes. And I think they kill everyone on the team. Yeah. The persistence. Or hatch even is caught, they're all dead. The idea that they're just like, what's important is that this game goes off no matter what. It's just like goes against everything we know about Nazis. And then we mentioned the bicycle kick.

If you don't have seven broken ribs, doable. It's one of the hardest things to do in sports, though. But then kicks it, lands it, and then they all jump them. Stallone picks them up. It's like, wait, did this guy have seven broken ribs or not? I would have loved if when they do the end credits and they're showing all the players and they're like what country he's from, they had also done a title card of like what happened to this player after this. And it was like,

each one is there. Fernandez, like collapsed lung, die shortly after the match. Hatch, like killed by his own soldiers for being so fucking annoying. The last The last pick you mentioned I just think the soldiers start shooting everybody at the end Yeah The moment there's real danger, that's it

There's just guns coming out And the whole concept of the Inept Nazi security guard They really take it and run with it on this Next category could this be remade As a 10 episode Netflix show I think the You me and producer Craig

We all agree Yes, please. Yeah. I actually think this would be a great idea for a Netflix show. Yeah. But I do think they should be basketball. So what war would you do as? I think you have to switch sports. I think it's sacrilegious to do soccer.

So are you saying you would do it during the, we're still doing World War II? No. We're in World War III now. Oh, cool. So like Red Dawn meets Hoosiers. Yeah. It's Red Dawn meets Hoosiers. What did we just come up with a billion dollar idea here?

Yeah. Red Dawn meets Hoosiers? Oh my God. Mavra Carter's calling. I mean. Maverick, stay away from my idea. It just, I think basketball and then, like, LeBron as Pele, and it's just, it writes itself. Yeah.

Russell Westbrook changes teams four times. Well, last Hackman performance? Is Hackman still around? Gene Hackman is Greg Popovich. Probably in answerable questions. How fast did the good Nazi get murdered after the game? Do you think they just, did they murder Stiner? I think Steyner is like,

I better get out of the stadium with these guys. You think he's just like, he's looking around. It's like, fuck it. Runs into the crowd. He's dead the next day?

Or he's just transferred to the Russian front. It's like, how'd the game go, Steiner? Wasn't quite the propaganda boom. I thought it was going to be. So we tied

and then everyone escaped. Turns out we had an insurmountable four-goal lead going into half-time. Yeah. with two minutes to go before a half-time, we were up for nothing, up a man, and we had crippled everyone on the other team.

All right, another in answerable question. Stallone wanted to be the one to score the winning goal. The cast and the technicians, and they all intervene, and they say this would be absurd. But then he thought it should be like a long punt or something that bounces or some sort of goal kick,

like the goalie actually kicking it. But then in the years since the movie was made, this has actually happened a couple times in games. Where the keeper has scored? Where the keeper has scored. Yes. So the question is, would you rather at Stallone save the penalty kick or would you rather had him, they're pressing up in the last minute of the game and he gets like a header or some sort of deflection thing?

Or the Germans are pressing because they want to win and slide does this miracle punt that just rolls all the way down and scores. we're probably best with the penalty kick, but... Yeah, the Sly coming... The way they have it is the best. Sly going up and getting like a header or a tap in is probably the most realistic thing. Stallone being able to punt the length of the field

and dribble it in behind the... Why would the German keeper not be there? I don't know. They had to explain this to Steylon. Next that answer is a question. Did the Hatch play more goalie after this? Did he pick it up? Start playing pickup.

Can he stay in gold? Do you try their positions? No, so Hatch goes back to America with his French bride. And he tries to popularize soccer. And everybody's just like, you got to shut the fuck up about soccer Hatch. Please, Hatch. You guys, they call it football over there. Do you think he kept to touch with Fernandez?

It's Fernandez. It's Fernandez. worst bench. The allies with the guys they brought in who were all skeletons, or the $2,021 bucks. So what do you think of the plot line? Very funny.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step on your journey. That's all right. What do you think of the Eastern Europeans thing where it's like we've got these five Eastern Europeans who can't play, but we have to play the match for their sake because otherwise they'll go back to the labor camp.

I liked it. I didn't understand it. I just took the movie for its word and I liked it. I was in on it. I feel like they could have gotten them enough food and water that they could have gotten at least one of them up to speed, right? Also, like, huge missed opportunity for one of those guys not to play 10 minutes. They weren't exactly like doing like protein powder.

Like Michael, the first thing he negotiates for is beer. Fair. He needed to keep his pot belly. But they could have one of those guys come in for five minutes. Yeah, I was disappointed that they did. Take like one corner or something. Any other in answerable questions for you? I mean, so many, like, do you think that the hot tub trick works, just banging under the bottom of the hot tub and all the water pours out?

Like, wouldn't that flood the tunnel kind of? Yeah, it seems like it would have killed the two people in anything. Yeah. Yeah, all of my unanswerable questions are related to Hatch's escape and Hatch's whole existence. Is my last unanswerable question, is this the number one sports movie event you would have wanted to go to? I'm trying to think what else would have needed to happen. My answer to this is always Roy Hobbs. That isn't like, that isn't already real.

Like I would have wanted to go to the miracle on ice. But like fictional sports movie event. Fictional. There are a couple of football games and wildcats. I would have mind been being out. Oh, wow, wildcats. Yeah. My answer to this is always the Roy Hobbs.

Oh, yeah. Being out, hitting the Homer and knocking out the lights and the Braves make the pennant. But that would be a, that would be my pick. All right. This is, my buddy Gus has just joined us. You got to unmute yourself, Gus. Howdy. That's Chris Ryan.

Hey, Gus. You don't even know what we're doing. I gave you no prep at all. You have no idea why you're here. Yeah. We're doing a rewatchables right now, right? We're at the tail end. Okay.

Please, Hatch. You must play. You know how much this game means to us. Needed you as a tie-breaking vote. Biggest nitpick in the movie. Here are the nominees. Actually, you know this movie so well. I am going to let you.

You have no prep. You didn't know what you're doing. Your biggest nitpick of the movie. There's zero chance. The goalie lets his arm get broken. I'm sorry. Can I have a torn hamstring? That's what we were saying.

Right. Can it be someone accidentally douged me in the eye? I'll take a fall. Like, why do they have to break his arm? And why does he don't agree to it? We, Gus and I have been talking about this literally since I met Gus, which I think was 1982, or almost on the 40th anniversary of that. We just never understood it.

It never made sense. It's never explained. We don't know what he gained from it. And the only benefit was that they made it a good break. It's a clean break. But then they stay. So for like the entire second half, he's got to be like, wait, why did we break my arm? It was only by accident that they all escaped and run out the door.

So he'd be like, you broke my arm for nothing. I think he died of alcoholism about two years later. Oh my God. He just was so bitter. Yeah. Gus, stay for the ending here. Wait, because I went away in. You said the movie event that you would go to is the Roy Hobbs Homer?

The fictional sporting event that you would most want to be at. Over Rocky beating Drago. Russia? I would have been too scared to be with the Russians. My safety would have been compromised all the time. The Roy Hobbs is just an organic, great, fun moment. That was my case for that. The lights go out. You can't even see him barely rounding the bases. Roy Hobbs limps out. He's, he's looked like dog shit the whole movie. He's bleeding from his side. And then he wins the pennant and the lights go out and everyone goes and gets drunk. You wouldn't have known that he was bleeding. there's no Twitter.

You're not going to know that you're 20 little spot on his side. Would you even know that he didn't have Wonderboy? Yeah, fair, fair. So you would go with Rocky for Cold War? Oh, God. To be in that atmosphere and then to have a good night win? Like, that's the ultimate in your face to everybody.

I guess the Russians turning around and rooting for Rocky. You're like, see, I told you, right? Billy Packer standing up there with a spot on this. head. You go like in, you go Captain Dreb and you put him in a headlock and rub that thing off his head. The Gorbachev guy. Yeah. That's the ultimate in your face. It's pretty good. I think this would have been good though. You get to see an amazing soccer game. You get to see Slash the loan play goal. You get to see a bicycle kick and you get to escape at the end. With my luck,

though, I would be like the one guy that the Germans would grab. They'd be like, hey, you. You get accidentally hit by a rifle butt. And you get to sing the French National Anthem. Oh, yeah. In that movie in Casablanca, if there was ever a connection to two movies that don't belong connected, the two most powerful moments in Casablanca and victory

is the singing of the French National Anthem gets me every time. I told Chris, I've seen this movie so many times that I now sing along, even though I don't know any of the words, but I can kind of fake it. I can fake it pretty well.

It's like, what's his face, and the Rational National Anthem is the wrestling. Oh, yeah. Nikolai Volkov. My vo-da-ho, we don't know, but it sounds right.

Two, last two categories, Gus, stay for these. Yeah. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? I think we're probably all going to have the same answer.

But it could be anything in the movie. I like some of Waldron's sweaters. Pretty good. I just, I think the, the Pele jersey, the Game-Worn Pele jersey from this movie

would be my pick. I want the signed cast from Gold Co. That's a good one. That would be funny. I wouldn't mind having the radio thing that makes the crowd noise, and I would use that on pods. Like whenever I made a good point, I'd just be like, and the crowd goes wild.

This is a tough one. This is another reason I want to bring you on, Gus. You see, you're the only other person who's seen this movie as many times as me. Who won the movie? Because I I don't think it's Slice Stallone. I don't feel like this movie was ultimately a win for Slice Stallone in the way that some of his other movies have been. So who's the winner?

I am going with Pele. I'll make the case. Chris and I discussed this earlier. Didn't have a lot of Pele experience as a fan in the 70s just knew about Pele, but really it was wide world of sports and that's it. A couple Cosmos games. And this became his adoring legacy. He nails the bicycle kick.

He made soccer seem cool. soccer really wasn't on. And then it's lived on for 40 years. So I feel like he was the winner. What do you have, Gus? I'm going to do with Michael Kane showing us that he could pretty much act under any circumstances and we'll kind of believe it.

Like, as you pointed out, I think the last time this was on and you and I were texting, they do a really good job of shooting around his abilities as a soccer player. His lack of abilities, yeah. But it's kind of like Philip Seymour Hoffman somehow giving life to Art Howe.

Like Michael Kane, somehow is a great comparison. Is a somehow believable soccer player in this movie and I think this was what this is still early 80s so people must have seen that

and go God that guy can really do anything let's put him in our movie. Chris I forgot to bring this up we never knew what position he was center half he plays defense and then he moves up forward so he was the six. No he's like I think he's one of the centerbacks.

Okay. Yeah. But then guys we mentioned he moved up to forward after Pele got hurt. He's like I'll play forward I'm going to take my pot belly up to the striker position.

Don't make me run. You can tell me and be with a pass. He's pretty good. Like he has some gravitas in the first hour of this movie, but you can tell by the game that this movie is like the dramatic parts of the movie are being written on the spot

because in the tunnel when he's like okay, I'll lead you all to like to get out of here. And then one guy is like, we can win. He's like, what did you say? Did you say that we can win? Do you guys want to go back and play? It's this most absurd thing. Who do you have for who won the movie, Chris?

Pele. All right, so two Peleys and one Michael Cain. And the sleeper pick is soccer, Bill. Soccer won the movie. That's true. That's pretty true. I can't tell. What is in our pantheon of movies we've discussed the most?

This is in the top four. But it's probably Rocky 3, Rocky 4, this. Yeah, but after this movie, people probably went out and maybe played a little soccer more than they ever would have before. Kind of like after breaking away, people decided they wanted to get on bikes and ride. Yeah, everybody went to the picture. They started jogging, remember? Yep.

Yeah, maybe soccer wins the movie. That's a good one. I like that. Yeah. All right, that was good. Gus, thanks for popping on. My pleasure. Chris, it was a pleasure as always.

This rewatchable's podcast was produced by our guy, Craig Horlebeck, and we'll be back next week with the 200th episode. See you next.