Movie · 2025 · Drama, History · 1h 31m · R · English
Curator score: 5.0/10 (13.9K ratings)
Anger. Management.
Overview
On the eve of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Irish captain Roy Keane forfeits his place in the squad at the team's preparation base in Saipan, following a heated disagreement with manager Mick McCarthy.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.0/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.41/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 68
TMDB: 6.1/10
Director
Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Production
Northern Ireland Screen, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Fine Point Films
Cast
Éanna Hardwicke, Steve Coogan, Alice Lowe, Peter McDonald, Harriet Cains, Jamie Beamish, Alex Murphy, Oliver Coopersmith, Jack Hickey, Aoife Hinds, Stephen Jones, Niall McNamee, Jack McKee, Matthew Cassidy, Chris McCurry, Miles Paloma, Micheál Woods, Una Carroll, Ryan Guy, Ross Fallows
Where to watch
MUBI
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, funny, and very Irish sports-drama chamber piece, built around a legendary football fallout and powered by strong performances and a charged sense of national memory. It should land especially well for viewers who like character-driven conflict, locker-room politics, and movies that turn a real-life grievance into something mythic.
Best for
football fans
viewers who enjoy true-story drama
people who like performance-driven conflict films
fans of Irish cinema and culture
audiences who appreciate dry humor in serious drama
Skip if
you want a broad, uplifting sports movie
you dislike films centered on arguments and ego clashes
you need a lot of on-field action
you are unfamiliar with or uninterested in football history
Overview
Saipan turns one of modern football’s most infamous ruptures into a tense, compact drama about pride, authority, and the burden of being a national symbol. The setup is simple, but the emotional stakes are huge: a team preparation camp becomes a pressure cooker where every slight feels historic.
Worth noting
What makes it work is the balance between seriousness and wit. The film understands that this story is both absurd and deeply consequential, and it leans into the awkwardness, the resentment, and the bruised masculinity without losing sight of the human cost. The performances carry a lot of that weight.
Bottom line
It’s not a conventional sports film, and that’s a strength. Rather than chasing the match-day high, it focuses on the fracture before the tournament, when identity, loyalty, and ego collide. For viewers tuned into football culture, it’s catnip; for everyone else, it’s still a lean, well-observed drama about a relationship that implodes in public.
Top Letterboxd reviews
DonKian (3.5★) · 1597 likes
People will say Éanna Hardwicke killed it in his portrayal of Roy Keane. And look he’s done brilliantly for himself and all. But we can keep ourselves grounded, can’t we? He’s an actor. It’s like praising the postman for delivering the mail. That’s his job.
Seán (3.5★) · 498 likes
Every time they start to lose you in the movie they play a tiktok football hope core edit. And it worked every time to pull me back in
gráinne (3.5★) · 481 likes
autistic king roy keane faces untold horrors at the hands of alan partridge
Ian Curran (4★) · 384 likes
Waiting For The GOAT
To say Roy Keane was Ireland’s answer to JFK Jr. and that Saipan was his plane crash (at least in an Irish shirt), would be truthful and melodramatic all at once.
If you were a football fan in the 90s — especially an Irish Man United fan like I was — Roy, much like JFK Jr. in that decade was the prince who was promised. From the moment he signed from Nottingham Forest, the hope was… more
2010 · Drama · 1h 56m · R · Curator 7.6/10 (688.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A gritty, character-first sports drama where family loyalty, resentment, and pride matter as much as the competition itself.