Tuesday, March 2, 2021

film review: The End of the Storm

 


 

Directed by James Erskine

Written by James Erskine

ChinoKino score: D

Review by Allan Tong

The End of the Storm plays like one of those glossy mini-hagiographies that sports networks run during intermissions to keep hometown fans cheering between halves and periods. The big difference is that End of the Storm runs for 99 agonizing minutes and hypes the entire Liverpool football club who topped the Premier League in 2019-20. 

I'm not slagging Liverpool FC at all. They're a great team. Legends. But this documentary is such an obvious exercise in corporate P.R. that I get no sense of what it's really like for them to compete in the top football (soccer) league on the planet. Pro football is big business, where coaches are turfed when their team slides or players are hounded by fans when they slump. The pressure is enormous, the egos are explosive and the fan expectations unrealistic. You get none of that in this film.