Saipan - it's no Reeling in the Years

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Written by Denise Breen

If you’ve turned on the radio in the last while, you haven’t been able to escape the Saipan chat. RTE's "Liveline" has had people on Liveline arguing about the FAI’s logistics from 23 years ago as if it happened yesterday. The Late Late did a whole special on it. It feels less like a movie release and more like a reopening of a national tribunal.

So, is the film actually any good, or is it just nostalgic trauma bait for those of us who still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about cheese sandwiches and unwatered pitches?

To be honest, it's a 3-star film about a 5-star meltdown.

The big worry was always going to be the casting, but fair play to Éanna Hardwicke. He doesn't just do an impression of Roy Keane; he captures the sheer, vibrating intensity of the man. There’s a scene where he’s staring down the FAI suits in the hotel lobby, and I swear the temperature in the cinema dropped five degrees. He gets that Cork stare down to a terrifying art.

Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy is a trickier one. Look, Steve Coogan is a great actor, and he gets the Barnsley accent right, but there are moments where you can’t help but see Alan Partridge in a green tracksuit. He plays Mick a bit more "bumbled and beleaguered" than I remember him. The real Mick McCarthy was a big, imposing presence. Coogan’s Mick feels a bit too soft, a bit too ready to be the victim of Roy’s standards.

The filmmakers (Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa) have done a decent job blending the drama with actual archive footage—seeing Tony O'Donoghue and hearing Gerry Ryan’s voice again gave me genuine goosebumps. It grounds the film in that weird, fever-dream atmosphere of summer 2002 which starts with a great radio clip featuring Áine Lawlor.

But there’s a polish to the film that feels slightly wrong. The famous "f**king pitch" in Saipan looks a bit too cinematic. The arguments, while tense, feel written. The reality of 2002 was messier, pettier, and grimmer than what’s on screen. The film tries to make sense of something that was fundamentally nonsensical.

There’s also the issue of "taking sides." The film tries desperately to sit on the fence, showing Roy’s perfectionism and Mick’s pragmatism as equal forces. But anyone who lived through it knows you can’t sit on the fence. You’re either Team Roy or Team Mick. By trying to please everyone, the film loses a bit of the bite that made the actual event so explosive.

If you’re under 30 and wondering why your Da gets angry every time he sees a bib, this is a handy history lesson. It’s well-made, the soundtrack is a banger (lots of 2000s indie hits), and Hardwicke is electric. But for the rest of us? It’s a strange experience. It’s weirdly entertaining to watch our national breakdown re-enacted by famous actors, but it doesn't tell us anything we didn't already shout at the TV screen 23 years ago.

Go see it for Hardwicke’s performance and the nostalgia, but don’t expect it to finally settle the argument. If anything, it’ll just have you fighting with your friends in the pub afterwards. Again.