Michael Fassbender Archives

Review: ‘Next Goal Wins’ (2023), starring Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, David Fane, Rachel House, Beulah Koale, Will Arnett and Elisabeth Moss

November 17, 2023

by Carla Hay

Michael Fassbender (center) in “Next Goal Wins” (Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Searchlight Pictures)

“Next Goal Wins” (2023)

Directed by Taika Waititi

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2011, mostly in American Samoa, the comedy/drama film “Next Goal Wins” (based on real events) features Asian/Pacific Islander and white characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A hard-drinking and volatile soccer coach is exiled to work with the American Samoa National Team, which hasn’t scored a goal in years.

Culture Audience: “Next Goal Wins” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Taika Waititi, star Michael Fassbender, and “against-all-odds” sports movies that are very corny.

Cast members of “Next Goal Wins,” including Lehi Falepapalangi (third from left), Kaimana (fourth from left), Michael Fassbender (fifth from left) and Beulah Koale (sixth from left). (Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Searchlight Pictures)

“Next Goal Wins” should’ve been a creative and exciting sports movie, considering the uniqueness of this true story. Instead, it overuses tiresome clichés of a grumpy outsider training a ragtag team. The dull comedy and ethnic stereotypes are cringeworthy. “Next Goal Wins” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by Taika Waititi (who co-wrote the subpar “Next Goal Wins” screenplay with Iain Morris), “Next Goal Wins” is based on a true story of how Dutch-born soccer coach Thomas Rongen transformed the American Samoa National Team from being on a losing streak of never scoring a goal in games for years to being a team capable of scoring goals and winning games. This story was also the subject of the 2014 documentary “Next Goal Wins.”

The scripted version of “Next Goal Wins” (which takes place in 2011) follows every single formula that has been done so many times already in similar movies, except the sports team in “Next Goal Wins” happens to have a transgender player. Waititi does occasional voiceover narration that’s supposed to sound folksy and whimsical, but it just comes across as annoying and unnecessary. Waititi also has a cameo role in the movie as an American Samoan priest.

In the beginning of “Next Goal Wins,” there’s a flashback to 2001, as the narrator explains that the American Samoa National Team experienced a humiliating 31-0 loss in a FIFA World Cup qualification match against Australia. Archival footage shows some of this match, as the narrator says the obvious: The American Samoan team is bad at playing soccer. The team hasn’t scored a goal in the 10 years since then.

“Next Goal Wins” then fast-forwards to 2011. The head of the American Samoa Football Federation is cheerful and friendly Tavita (played by Oscar Kightley), but he doesn’t have the respect of the team. How do we know they don’t respect him? While he was asleep, they used a marker pen to draw breasts on his face. Tavita has these markings on his face for a few days. It’s supposed to be a funny sight gag in the movie, but it just looks stupid.

Tavita’s wife Ruth (played by Rachel House) is fed up with the team never being able to win a game. At the spouses’ home, she tells Tavita what needs to happen to find a better coach for the team: “You have to go off-island.” Tavita and Ruth have a young adult son named Daru (played Beulah Koale), who is on the team and who dislikes this idea of finding a new coach from outside of American Samoa. “It’s treason!” Daru exclaims.

Ruth yells, “We’re getting a real coach!” And besides, Ruth tells Tavita and Daru, she’s already placed an ad to get a new coach for the team. The team has a coach named Ace (played by David Fane), who will be demoted to assistant coach when the American Samoa Football Federation finds a head coach who can “save” the American Samoa National Team.

Meanwhile, on the mainland United States, abrasive soccer coach Thomas Rongen (played by Michael Fassbender) is facing a four-person panel from the American Soccer Federation telling him that he’s been fired from his most recent team. Thomas still gets a chance to work for the American Soccer Federation, but he’s told that he’s being exiled to work with the losing-streak American Samoa National Team. Not surprisingly, Thomas is angry and insulted.

Making matters worse, two of the people who’ve made this decision are Thomas’ estranged wife Gail (played by Elisabeth Moss) and her current boyfriend Alex Magnussen (played by Will Arnett), the smug leader of the American Soccer Federation. (This love triangle scenario did not happen in real life.) Rhys Darby has a small and inconsequential role as another American Soccer Federation panelist named Rhys Marlin. Darby seems to be in this movie only because he’s a friend of Waititi, a fellow New Zealander comedian.

Also different from real life: The Thomas Rongen in this movie isn’t a native of the Netherlands. Instead of having a Dutch accent in this movie, Thomas Rongen has an Irish accent, because Fassbender has an Irish accent in real life. In this “Next Goal Wins” movie, Thomas is a stereotypical down-on-his luck coach with a drinking problem who hates having to work with a losing team.

The scenes of Thomas getting culture shock in American Samoa are unimaginative and boring. Thomas gets annoyed that every person who gives him a car ride in American Samoa is laid-back and won’t drive faster than 20 miles per hour. Thomas thinks it’s ridiculous that people in American Samoa want to work less hours than what he’s accustomed to on the mainland.

Thomas doesn’t understand the local tradition of “curfew time,” when people stop everything during certain times of the day to pray and meditate. Thomas becomes enraged when the team members tell him that they don’t want to practice on Sundays, for religious reasons. That’s why it looks so phony later in the movie when Thomas (who acts like he’s allergic to religion for most of “Next Goal Wins”) actually gets baptized in a body of water, with several members of the team in attendance.

As for the team members, only a few have memorable personalities. Daru is the team’s rebellious “bad boy” and is one of the team’s worst players. Jaiyah (played by Kaimana) is a transitioning transgender woman, whose name in her previous life was Johnny. Rambo (played by Semu Filipo) is a goofy and bumbling police officer, who somehow gets recruited to the team after he pulls Thomas over for erratic speeding on the road.

Other team members include Jonah (played by Chris Alosio), a promising young striker; Pisa (played by Lehi Falepapalangi), a large-sized goalie; and Samson (played by Hio Pelesasa), a long-haired midfielder. There’s a very hokey segment of the movie where Thomas and Jaiyah work together to track down former team members in attempts to convince them to play for the team again. The most notable of these former members is Smiley (played by Ioane Goodhue), a goalie who was on the team during the embarrassing 2001 FIFA loss and is the closest thing that the team had to a star player.

At first, Thomas clashes with Jaiyah the most because Thomas doesn’t understand what being transgender means. Jaiyah and Thomas get into a physical brawl after Thomas taunts Jaiyah by calling her by her dead name Johnny, even though Thomas knew how offensive that would be to Jaiyah. But in a sappy movie like “Next Goal Wins,” you just know there will come a time when the coach and player who started off as enemies will find a way to become friends.

The movie’s approach to soccer is incredibly simple-minded. Thomas announces to the team that his strategy is for them to work on “strength and discipline,” which he compares to being like “cheese and pepper.” The practice scenes are jumbled and filmed in a lazy way.

The team has a young fan named Armani (played by Armani Makaiwa), who’s about 12 or 13 years old. The movie treats him like a mindless mascot, because Armani doesn’t say anything in the movie, which never bothers to explain why this mute child has all this time to spend with the team. Shouldn’t he be in school? Where are his parents?

There’s also a very misleading subplot about Thomas constantly listening to voice mail messages from his teenage daughter Nicole (voiced by Kaitlyn Dever), who is always asking why Thomas won’t communicate with her. Why won’t he call her back? The answer, which is revealed near the end of the movie, is completely manipulative.

“Next Goal Wins” repeatedly shows that Thomas wants to get back together with his estranged wife Gail, but it never mentions why they broke up in the first place. The separation from Gail is supposed to make Thomas look lovelorn and sympathetic. But it doesn’t work, because he’s such a relentless jerk for most of the movie, until he goes through a sudden personality change after making a big speech.

“Next Goal Wins” has some heartfelt and well-acted scenes with Thomas and Jaiyah, but how they end up befriending each other looks too forced and contrived. The racial issues that were hinted at in the beginning of the movie, when Daru objected to hiring a non-Samoan coach, are warped to fit a “white savior” narrative, when “Next Goal Wins” becomes about Thomas and how he’s uncomfortable with Samoan culture. The movie treats the Samoans as all having to accommodate Thomas and eventually be willing to tolerate Thomas’ insults and tirades.

Outstanding sports movies about athletic teams make viewers feel like they know several members of the team, not just a few. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case with “Next Goal Wins,” which makes most of the team members utterly generic side characters. The Samoan team members in “Next Goal Wins” are portrayed as helpless dolts who need a rejected and rude coach of European heritage to make them into a winning team. It’s ethnic condescension at its worst. “Next Goal Wins” might have worked as a satire of sports movie stereotypes, but the movie’s comedy and overall filmmaking are as limp as a deflated soccer ball.

Searchlight Pictures released “Next Goal Wins” in U.S. cinemas on November 17, 2023.

Review: ‘The Killer’ (2023), starring Michael Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Kerry O’Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Sala Baker and Tilda Swinton

October 27, 2023

by Carla Hay

Michael Fassbender in “The Killer” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“The Killer” (2023)

Directed by David Fincher

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States, Europe, and the Dominican Republic, the dramatic film “The Killer” (based on the French graphic novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An assassin goes on a revenge mission to find and kill the people who brutally attacked his live-in girlfriend during a home invasion.

Culture Audience: “The Killer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker David Fincher, star Michael Fassbender, and taut thrillers about assassins.

“The Killer” isn’t the best work from the stars and filmmakers of this somewhat predictable drama about an assassin who goes on a personal vendetta. However, the movie’s performances are above-average. The voiceover narration will get mixed reactions. Some viewers will find this constant narration to be a very annoying distraction, while other viewers won’t mind or will think the narration is one of the best aspects of the movie. “The Killer” had its world premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2023 New York Film Festival.

Directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker, “The Killer” is based on the 2018 French graphic novel of the same name, written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon. The movie plays out very much like a graphic novel, with listed chapters and simple dialogue. In the movie, the real name of the title character (played by Michael Fassbender) is never revealed. For the purposes of this review, this assassin will be referred to by the name is he has in the movie’s end credits: The Killer.

The Killer is an American who uses aliases that are the names of famous characters from American TV series. It’s an example of the movie’s wry comedy that the people he encounters don’t notice or don’t even know that the name he has is the same as a TV character. Among the fake names that he uses are Felix Unger and Oscar Madison (“The Odd Couple”), Archibald Bunker (“All in the Family”), Sam Malone (“Cheers”) and Lou Grant (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant”).

Nothing is revealed about The Killer’s personal background before he became a murderer for hire. All that is really known is that The Killer is an elite assassin who is hired by wealthy people. He is considered among the “best of the best” because he’s very meticulous, he has a reputation for never making mistakes, and he has never been caught. But his error-free track record is about to change.

From the movie’s opening scene, viewers get a load of The Killer’s innermost thoughts through voiceover narration. These inner thoughts do not let up for the entire movie. It’s in contrast to the fact that The Killer doesn’t have a lot of scenes where he’s actually talking out loud. He spends a lot of time by himself and talks to people only when necessary.

The movie’s first 10 minutes show The Killer doing what is part of his assassin job: stalking his target and waiting for the right moment to commit the murder. This preparation requires discipline and the ability to tolerate waiting in one place for a long period of time. As The Killer explains in the beginning of the movie: “It’s amazing how physically exhausting it can be to do nothing.” He adds that if you can’t endure boredom, “this work is not for you.”

Well, there’s a lot more to being an assassin than the ability to endure boredom. It takes a certain lack of humanity to kill people for money. The Killer has this to say about his deadly job: “Popeye the Sailor said it best: ‘I am what I am.'” He then says, as if to justify that he’s just a cog in the wheel of sin and corruption: “I’m not exceptional. I’m just a part.” This particular statement carries weight, considering what he says at the very end of the movie.

The Killer says other things to indicate that he’s extremely jaded and emotionally disconnected from a lot of things. For example, he utters, “Luck isn’t real, nor is karma, nor is justice.” But then, he contradicts himself and says that people should consider themselves lucky if they never meet him.

In order to stalk his victims, The Killer has to stay at places close to where he can observe the target and the target’s routines. The Killer quips, “I used to book a lot through Airbnb. Not anymore. Those [Airbnb] Superhosts love their nanny cams.”

In the beginning of “The Killer,” he is shown in Paris at a high-rise hotel that is directly across from a stately home where he can clearly see inside the home. The home is where his target is and where The Killer is setting up his sniper gun to commit the murder. Inside the home, the target is a middle-aged man (played by Endre Hules) enjoying the company of a dominatrix (played by Monique Ganderton), who is just about to start their session.

The Killer takes aim and fires. And he shoots and kills the wrong person: the dominatrix. The middle-aged man reacts with shock. In a nearby room, a few servants hear the gunshot, go into the room, see the dead woman, and panic ensues. As soon as The Killer sees the mistake that he’s made, he quickly leaves the hotel and drives away, as police cars driving in the opposite direction toward the murder scene. Before he leaves the scene, The Killer says in a voiceover, “WWJWBD: What would John Wilkes Booth do?”

Shortly after this botched assassination, The Killer is in a phone conversation with a man named Claybourne (played by Arliss Howard), who hired The Killer for this murder. The client is furious with The Killer, who is shocked and embarrassed about this colossal mistake. It’s the first time The Killer has bungled an assassin job by murdering the wrong person. Claybourne hisses at The Killer that it’s too late to get another chance to kill the target: “The window of opportunity has closed.”

The Killer knows there will be severe consequences to him for this mistake. On a hunch, he rushes back to his home hideout in the Dominican Republic. The place has all the signs that a violent home invasion has recently taken place. Windows are shattered by gun bullets, indicating a forced entry. Items inside the home are smashed, shot up, or in other forms of disarray. There’s blood on the floor and walls. And his live-in girlfriend Magdala (played by Sophie Charlotte) is missing.

The Killer finds out that Magdala is in a local hospital. She’s been brutally attacked and is temporarily in a coma. Magdala’s brother Marcus (played by Emiliano Pernía) is also at the hospital. Marcus says to The Killer about the home invaders: “They came for you.” When Magdala regains consciousness, she tells The Killer that the two people who attacked her (a man and a woman) were not disguised and she can describe them.

Just like her brother Marcus, Magadala also seems to know what The Killer does for money and that the home invasion had something to do with The Killer’s deadly job. “I didn’t tell them anything,” she says to The Killer, as if she wants to assure him that she will stay loyal to him. The Killer knows this assault is revenge for his botched assassination. He feels guilty about it but he mostly feels very angry.

The rest of “The Killer” shows him on a vendetta to find the people who attacked Magdala and murder them. He has to use detective skills to find these attackers because he doesn’t have much information at the beginning of his investigation. His revenge mission takes him to different parts of North America and Europe. (“The Killer” was filmed in Paris, Illinois and the Dominican Republic.)

Some of the memorable people he encounters along the way are an international trade attorney named Edward Hodges (played by Charles Parnell); Edward’s administrative assistant Dolores (played by Kerry O’Malley); and nameless characters described in the movie’s end credits only as The Expert (played by Tilda Swinton) and The Brute (played by Sala Baker). During his revenge scheme, viewers will hear more of The Killer’s inner thoughts.

A life motto that The Killer keeps repeating are these sentences: “Forbid empathy. Empathy is weakness. Weakness is vulnerability.” One of the main concepts of The Killer is that he thought he could separate his personal feelings and his personal life from his job, but the attack on Magdala was a rude awakening on how his job could dangerously spill over into his personal life. And therefore, his perception of empathy as a “weakness” starts to change.

The Killer previously murdered people for money as a business transaction. Now, he’s on a murderous rampage for emotional reasons and pure revenge. The movie doesn’t try to have any moralistic preaching about which type of murder is more “noble” than the other. The movie hinges on Fassbender’s capable and somewhat fascinating performance, where he has to go from cold-blooded and aloof to someone who is so fired up with thoughts of revenge for a loved one, it becomes his obsession.

Even with all the good acting in “The Killer,” after a while, there are formulaic plot developments. It’s the type of movie that can be suspenseful yet have almost no surprises. Because the intentions of The Killer are very transparent, the only mystery is how he is going to find the elusive home invaders.

“The Killer” is very much a “focus on the present day” movie, since almost nothing is told about The Killer’s past or what might happen to him in the future. For example, the movie doesn’t put a lot of thought into what might happen if The Killer murders the home invaders, and people then try to get revenge him for those murders. Fincher’s directing of “The Killer” is efficient but not particularly imaginative. There’s plenty of physical violence in this movie, but the real story of “The Killer” is mostly about violence of the mind.

Netflix released “The Killer” in select U.S. cinemas on October 27, 2023. The movie will premiere on Netflix on November 10, 2023.