Categories
Drama

‘The Queenstown Kings’ is mildly entertaining (2023)

The Queenstown Kings is a lengthy and busy story, where 3 men as father, son, and stepfather enact so many plot points, they are almost too numerous to count.

The Story

Ezibeleni is a township in Queenstown, in the southeast part of South Africa, in which the legendary footballer Mkhulu Mahamba has set up a club in which his grandson Fezile plays. Fezile has the same kind of talent as his father and grandfather. Unfortunately, although father Buyile Mahamba is a famous pro with the Mamelodi Sundowns, he is a bit of a drunkard and estranged from Mkhulu and Fezile.

Mkhulu passes away on the pitch, but Buyile doesn’t make it to the funeral because he is arrested for drunk driving. His absence infuriates his son Fezile. Avoiding a harsh sentence, Buyile is allowed to do community service by coaching Fezile’s township team. However, Fezile’s stepdad Fana is already the coach. Fana is a policeman who coaches the team as a way to keep boys off the street while developing their discipline and fitness. Neither Fezile nor his stepdad want the drunkard Buyile around.

It takes awhile (like 2 hours) for Buyile to convince them that he can be an asset and help the team to compete in the Nedbank Cup tournament. Which comes in handy when Fana is shot in the line of duty. From there, the Queenstown Kings progress to the quarter finals versus the Mamelodi Sundowns. A Sundowns player and his girlfriend cheerleader (whom Fezile covets) help persuade the boy to switch teams before the big game.

The whole story gets pretty drawn out and complicated, and I barely covered half of the plot points.

About the soccer

From a technical standpoint, the soccer is not well-depicted on the pitch. What is more interesting is the chaos of the league play. The games are played in absolute mud baths. The team travels to  away games on the flatbed of a truck, and they are pelted by projectiles in a gauntlet between the truck and the pitch. On a controversial call, a fan with a gun chases the away team back to the truck.

There are funny moments when the team travels to Johannesburg on a rickety airplane, followed by their wonderment when they stay in a nice hotel with white beds and plastic room keys. There are also sad moments when a teammate is unable to shake his drug addiction.

About the actors

The performances are good. Zolisa Xaluva as Buylie is believable on the scale of both dissolute and inspirational. Although I thought Likhona Mgali looked too old for the role of Fezile, he is actually a teenager in his first starring role. He had to overcome a severe stutter and learn how to play soccer, and he succeeded in the first task. I also learned that the actor Patrick Ndlovu, who plays the patriach Mkhulu, passed away in May-2023, so this may have been his last film.

In Conclusion

The best part of the film is Zolisa Xaluva, an actor who really draws your attention, like Samuel Jackson. But otherwise, The Queenstown Kings is not a journey of twists and turns that keep you on edge. It’s more like driving down Las Vegas Blvd in bumper to bumper traffic and rubbernecking the activity on the sidewalk. You see some interesting things on your way, and eventually you arrive at the end of the Strip. But you don’t turn around to drive it again, because you’ve seen it all.

Maybe there are so many little plot points in this film, everything feels like filler? It is mildly entertaining, but I wasn’t moved by any of the characters or their stories.

6 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 6

Resources:

Categories
Documentary

Sadio Mané at his best in ‘Made in Senegal’ (2020)

Sadio Mané: Made in Senegal was originally meant to be a short video clip, but his boy-makes-good story was so compelling, the filmmakers turned it into a feature film. We learn how Mané grew up in a small village in Senegal, where farming was the only future available to children. Little Sadio though, was determined to be a footballer. Through his own drive, perseverance, and talent, Mané grew to a position of footballing fame that allowed him to give back to his community.

Categories
Documentary

‘Khartoum Offside’ (2019) intimate but confusing

Khartoum Offside is Writer-Director Marwa Zein’s first feature length film and has won a number of awards. I just don’t know enough about the film industry to understand why.

Categories
Documentary

‘Pro in Africa’ (2020) revisits a boy’s dreams

In the documentary Pojkdrömmen, Writer-Director Emil Moberg Lundén tells his own story of his last-ditch all-out attempt to become a pro footballer at age 30. It’s an entertaining film under an hour, as Emil is the anti-Zlatan, an attractive, talented man who comes to question his self-centered goal in the context of third world problems.

Categories
Documentary

Review – ‘Senzo: Murder of a Soccer Star’ (2022)

It’s not often that I rate a Netflix Original so low, as usually Netflix has a minimum level of quality. But somehow, the docuseries Senzo: Murder of a Soccer Star got past the QA department. Yeah, it’s a howler.

Categories
Cultural Kids

‘Africa United’ (2010) is a modern fairytale

Africa United starts off with Dudu, a young AIDS orphan in Rwanda, lecturing even younger boys on the use of condoms to protect against the disease. He then blows up the condom and turns it into a homemade soccer ball.

Categories
Documentary

‘Matthews’ (2017) admire the man but skip the film

The career of Sir Stanley Matthews is so long — he retired at age 50 — and the footage so slim that it is hard to understand why Gary Lineker calls Stanley “the Messi of his day”. 

It’s a difficult mission for the documentary Matthews – The Original No. 7. How do you make a 78-minute film more compelling than Tifo Football’s 5-minute animation “A Brief History of Stanley Matthews”? 

Categories
Cultural Documentary

Social change through ‘Zanzibar Soccer Dreams’ (2016)

Watching Zanzibar Soccer Dreams via the virtual 2020 Women Sports Film Festival, I suffered a little deja-vu, wondering if I had already seen this film. It turns out that this documentary, by two professors in the UK, came out only a year after New Generation Queens: A Zanzibar Soccer Story was released by a couple of young American women. I saw both films through the WSFF.

Categories
Documentary

‘The Rhino Cup’ (2019) – can football reduce poaching?

When anti-poachers asked a village how to help, the answer was a football league.

As a child, Matt Bracken developed a love for Africa’s wildlife, which lead to his becoming a safari travel specialist. From there, he became an anti-poaching ranger for ProTrack in South Africa. Protrack has 300 rangers in Mozambique who fight rhinoceros poachers.

Categories
Documentary Short

‘Alive & Kicking: The Soccer Grannies of South Africa’ (2016)

In this charming documentary, community organizer and radio show presenter Beka Ntsanwisi explains how and why she started Vakhegula Vakhegula, a soccer club for grannies in the region of Limpopo, South Africa. Suffering from chronic diseases or traumas, these Vakhegula (grannies, also called gogos) found football made them healthier and lifted their focus away from pain.

Categories
Documentary

‘Streetball’ (2010) best Homeless World Cup movie

Streetball is not just another homeless world cup film, it is the best of its genre. Despite being 10 years old, this documentary is fresh, vibrant, and still relevant in its reflection of the world today. Streetball also stands out as one of the few homeless world cup (HWC) films where the soccer is as engaging as the stories of the people.

Categories
Cultural Drama Suspense

‘Lost in Africa’ (2010) doesn’t flinch

Behind the benign title of Lost in Africa is a thriller that embodies every mother’s worst nightmare: her child vanishes. It’s not really a soccer movie as much as it is a reflection of the hard and dangerous life in Kiera, a Kenyan shanty town. 

Categories
Documentary

The story you never heard about ‘The Team That Never Played’ (2010)

If you are looking for a great idea for a soccer movie, you should buy the rights to this 10 year old documentary The Team That Never Played. Gather up the players interviewed by Writer-Director Greg Appel and fill out their stories while they can still be recalled. This is history that deserves to be retold on a bigger stage and preserved by more than word of mouth.

Categories
Comedy

‘Funke!’ (2018) is an Interesting view of Nigerian life

It’s hard to believe that in Sep-2018, two movies were released with the title Funke. This review is about the Nigerian feature film directed by Filmboyz Yemi Morafa and Friday Nwagwu. The other film is a documentary on Los Angeles restauranteur Evan Funke. 

Categories
Cultural Drama

‘Fintar o Destino’ (1998) is a beautiful time capsule

Fintar o Destino is a strikingly beautiful film, but not at all in a visual sense. Filmed in standard definition, the story immerses you in Cape Verdean village life and the regrets of Mané (Carlos Germano), a frustrated 50 year old former footballer. He didn’t leave the island when he had the chance, and to defy the taunt of a friend, he uses all his savings to try and recoup his dignity.