The Game of Their Lives

Daniel Gordon's documentary The Game of Their Lives (2002) tells the incredible story of North Korea's national football team's adventure in the 1966 World Cup tournament. They shocked the entire world by defeating Italy in the group phase and thus, forced the old World Cup champions to drop out of the tournament.

Despite the film's questionably sympathetic depiction of North Korea it provides great insight into one of the biggest mysteries of football history. The documentary is dominated by old footage of the tournament and makes the most out of it, which isn't exactly hard since the subject is interesting. The director also travelled to North Korea to interview the few surviving members of the team and the bits of the interviews used in the film are great. I'm not sure if the great responses can be credited to the efforts of the interviewer(s) or the openness of the players themselves. Nevertheless, their own comments are essential for the documentary.

The documentary is not without its faults. It uses a few rather underhanded tricks to emotionally involve its audience and it can be asked whether the director had his own agenda with the film since it makes North Korea look like the most pleasant country on Earth. Which in turns makes one wonder how truthful the documentary is in the end.

Score: 7 out of 10