I am not a big fan of sport dramas. The last that I watched was Battle of the Sexes, some three years ago. Actually I quite enjoyed it. Maybe I should pay more attention to films like that.
Compared to the first two features of the Czech cinema cycle, Golden Sting (or Golden Betrayal; neither translation makes much sense) is a much darker affair. Like Battle of the Sexes, it is “based on true events”, viz. Czechoslovakia winning EuroBasket 1946, participating in the London Olympics and narrowly losing to the Soviet Union in Paris. But the movie has so much more than sporty stuff: war, friendship, romance, jazz, travel, politics... Maybe a bit too much of the latter.
I honestly can’t blame the creators for their dislike of both communist regime and the big bully of the East. Even so, certain moments made me cringe. Did they really have to make the Soviet basketball team to look like a bunch of thugs? The big guy responsible for the winning free throw in the 1951 final game — a stereotypical Russian mafioso — in reality was the Lithuanian Stepas Butautas, although Wikipedia attributes it to the Estonian player Ilmar Kullam. Nor do I believe there ever was an obligation on the Czechoslovak side not to win against USSR. (Indeed, Czechoslovak athletes did beat Soviets on a number of occasions, nobody more spectacularly than their national ice hockey team.) Then again, who expects the drama to be completely (or even remotely, for that matter) historically accurate?
The brightest part of the film takes place in Geneva. The team’s manager finds the cheapest hotel that turns out to be a brothel. Some of the girls even go to the games to watch the boys. Ah, to be young. To be abroad for the first time. To fall in love. To win.
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