Only a few weeks after The Duke we have another British, mostly feelgood, true underdog story, Phantom of the Open.
Mark Rylance stars as Maurice Flitcroft, a crane operator at Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, who entered the Open Golf Championship qualifying in 1976, despite not playing a round on a course before, and carded the worst ever score of 121.
So, this is very much in the tradition of celebrating great British plucky losers, in the vein of Eddie the Eagle and it works mostly quite well. Rylance is very affecting, Sally Hawkins predictably touching as his devoted wife and it is good to see Mark Lewis Jones as Maurice’s dodgy mate.
Some of the sillier plot elements, such as Maurice, now banned, entering under a series of ludicrous pseudonyms and disguises are actually true, but it was some of the glaring errors that irked a little. There are numerous scenes of Maurice’s friends and foes watching him live on the TV, but the Open qualifying rounds are not even shown live now on the multitude of channels we have, and certainly were not then. Also, the scenes of him being chased by the police when he played as Frenchman Gerard Hoppy are not only made up but also don’t ring true.
The other problem I had was, in what is a pretty straightforward story, is the addition of a couple of fantasy sequences. They are cringeworthy and do not work at all. However, the performances had me rooting for Maurice to have one more shot!
Rating: 7 out of 10