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Eleven Men Out
by Here
| List Price: |
$24.95 |
| Price: |
$22.49 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: |
$2.46 (9%) |
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DVD
WELLSPRING/GENIUS
Publisher: Here
G. Magni Agustsson
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Actors: Sigurdur Skúlason, Jon Alti Jonasson, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Lilja Nótt, Arnmundur Ernst
The star player of Iceland’s top soccer team causes controversy when he admits to being gay to his teammates. He soon finds himself ostracized by his team and decides to call it quits to join a small amateur league made up of gay men trying to play football in a straight, macho world of sports.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Realistic but very feel good |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This seems to be a film that people either love or hate, judging by some of the reviews here. I fell for the "feel" of the movie, it's sometimes slow but always has a gentle and feel good rhythm to it. I thought most of the situations were handled realistically, situations regarding the main characters family and teenage son. I enjoyed the fact that although this film is very much about football, you don't actually see any footage of the game itself. The film centers more on the background of sports and what it is like to "come out" as a pro-footballer. The soundtrack of the film is also excellent, a throwback to 80's glam metal. This is one of the best foreign language films I've seen in a long time.
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| Somewhat pleasant, but lacks substance to be really good. |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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With the Olympic Games grabbing their share of the headlines these days, let's look at a film about an athlete "coming out" in another country ... Iceland.
"Eleven Men Out" (Iceland, 2005) is about a soccer star on one of the best amateur teams in that country, who abruptly decides to "come out" as gay, much to the surprise and complete shock of his teammates, father (who is apparently the head coach of the team), mother, siblings, ex-wife and teenage son. It doesn't go well, with his son ashamed of him, his ex-wife using it as an excuse to relapse with an alcohol problem, and the team trustees benching him until they eventually decide he can no longer play there. A friend who coaches a lesser-known (and apparently much more diverse, with several openly gay members) team invites him to join, and the "Pride" - which becomes almost 100% gay as others hear about it - starts to rack up victories, eventually taking on his old team, in a sold-out game on Gay Pride Day in Iceland.
It's a pleasant coming-out story, but seems more like a documentary than a film with characters and a plot. We never really get to know Ottar (the player who "outs" himself) beyond the facts that he has a past and is somewhat self-centered in not considering (and preparing others for) the possible implications of his announcement to the press, as well as in dealing with a teammate he starts dating. Some of the dialogue seems ad-libbed and frivilous, but that could be due to the fact that I was following English subtitles (The film is in Icelandic). Several seemingly gratuitious shots of the players in the shower make this seem almost like a "Full Monty" remake at times, and the ending - though perhaps realistic - is too abrupt. Similar stories have been told better, and this could have been too.
DVD includes several featurettes about gay amateur athletes. I give it three stars out of five.
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| Strangely mean-spirited & dull |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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This is not a "feisty comedy" a "hilarious comedy" or a comedy at all. It's probably not a film of any sort. It's just filmstock.
So let's not delude ourselves -- as a movie that typifies a sub-genre of gay cinema, a combination of 'coming-out' and 'sport,' "Eleven Men Out" offers nothing distinctive or titillating or rewarding for its target audience, presumably gay males.
If this movie were simply a rehash of the cliches that have come to dominate much of imported gay European cinema, the movie might have been tolerable. Some sweaty guys, some jokes about balls, some family acceptance scenes, some investigative sex, a club scene, a break-up, etc. But "Eleven Men Out" fails to capture even one or two of these marketable tropes. What the film does have are strangely mean-spirited and dull episodes, perhaps edited together, chronicling a vaguely handsome soccer-player's interactions with strangely mean-spirited and dull family members, lovers, fellow players. This film is joyless and ugly, often chauvinistic, sexist, biggoted and, well, all confusingly so. All the female characters are saps, whores, or drug-addled. The men are cruel or pathetic, or 'lost.'
The DVD cover is stirringly crisp and seductive, with a man cupping his teammate's bum. The actual film quality is grainy, drizzly, washed out, and the sound is hollow. I cannot see how this is 'stylized' rather than merely amateurish. The cast act like they hate themselves and the material. They do not know where to stand in the frame. When viewers are given 'eye candy' -- gratuitous shots of players showering -- the effect is numbingly banal and, worse, self-conscious.
The sports-aspect of its story, a dreary and confusing take on the politics of club soccer, is handled with side-long discussions in locker-rooms between coaches and half-clothed athletes. None of it is sharp, alluring, or political. The games are non-existent. There are no matches save for barely montaged bits of footwork. Or small crowds of people in stands baring their cheer for reaction shots to off-screen goals. The more intimate portrait of a family rocked by their son's sexuality is filmed with the most languid camera, punctuated by tinny emotion. The father-son struggles are crude and perfunctory.
In one scene, the son walks in on his father having anal intercourse with another man, and the son is disgusted. "Eleven Men Out" deserves this disgust -- all relationships in it are reduced to voyeaurism, bad timing, and disappointment. No one has any fun in sex or in love, or really anywhere. There is no pay-off to relationships. When the father and son come back together with a mutual understanding and respect for each other (actually, it's difficult to remember/know if they do), I couldn't help but feel cheated. I thought for sure someone would just off themselves; that is the internal logic of this abysmal film.
This film is Icelandic. I can't be sure it was meant to be a 'gay' movie at all in its home country, before here! studios picked it up for redistribution.
You will regret buying this film from any vendor, no matter the price.
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| a disapointment |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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The story is, if you can call it that, that a prominent icelandic soccer player comes out after a match so that he can be on the front page of a magasine. After that he gets kicked out of his club, finds a gay team (you don't see them play), they drive around to some small villages to play and ends up playing against his old team mates, and then the movies ends...oh yah you find out that he's been married, has an estranged son and he plays boyfriends with one of his gay team mate.
Boring, boring, boring. I am sorry i wasted money on the film.
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| having a blast |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Shows that prejudices and hard headed people are all over the world as these guys from Iceland must deal with the gay bashing while trying to compete as a gay soccer team. It all starts with the star of a popular soccer team announcing to the press after a game that he's gay. This doesnt go over well with most of the folks on his team his dad included being that he's the coach of the team.
He talks to him like its a sickness or a mental illness that can be "cured" when that drama stop for real. He's not hearing any of it at all and he's also dealing with a way drunk and so out of it ex-wife. He also has a son to look out for as well and he isnt too keen on him putting his business out for the world to see.
But throughout the movie the gain more favor with other folks who don't have an issue with an all gay soccer team. It's filled with drama and what not, but its also a fun movie that most should be able to enjoy.
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