The Best Sports Movies You've Never Seen

On a Clear Day (2005)
Director: Gaby Dellal
Starring: Peter Mullan, Brenda Blethyn
Baker Street, 98 minutes







On A Clear Day is the kind of movie to watch after a long day. I caught it on HBO at the tailend of a 10-day road trip that included stops in Bettendorf, Iowa, Chicago, New York City and Uncasville, Connecticut. All I needed was some early morning white noise while shuffling production notes and prepping for a day of International Fight League interviews. What I got was an absorbing 98 minutes.

Director Gaby Dellal’s feature debut invokes the pitch line: The Full Monty meets The Swimmer. Now THAT would be a movie for the ages: Burt Lancaster swims the Sheffield canal system on his way to the unemployment office while Robert Carlyle and Co., teach a Yorkshire vacationing chapter of the Junior Women’s League the Arsenal offside trap. (The scene where Horse demonstrates the Gunners mastery of soccer synchronicity is must see viewing for all coaches of “the Beautiful Game.”)

On A Clear Day borrows many of the conventions of the classic exotic dancing caper: male mid-life crisis sparked by unemployment, secrets between spouses, father-son relationships, and a cure-all audacious quest. The quest in this case: swimming the English Channel.

In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb made aquatic history when he swam the narrow body of water separating Britain from mainland Europe. A dozen decades later Frank Redmond (Peter Mullan) is an unlikely candidate to follow in Webb’s wake. After spending a lifetime in the Glasgow shipyards Frank’s job washed away on the changing tide of capitalism. His future is bleak. His past wasn’t much better.

Like his character in Trainspotting, (Swanney, the heroin supplier), Mullan creates a three-dimensional character out of the flotsam and jetsam of a deeply depressing situation. He keeps Frank’s fading hope afloat even while his demons try to submerge it.

While Frank stays focused on the black line running along the bottom of the pool, everyone else stays focused on Frank. Stereotypes lurk within all the supporting characters, they all live with their own various degrees of British emotional repression, (to paraphrase Basil Fawlty: “don’t mention the panic attack”), but whimsy and grace emerge.

Brenda Blethyn emerged on the Hollywood radar with her Academy Award nominated turn in “Secrets and Lies.” As befits a Mike Leigh troupe member, Blethyn revels in realism. Here she plays Frank’s wife, Joan. All you need to know about Blethyn’s attention to detail is that she takes her bus driver’s test wearing a “decent frock.”

And in a lot of ways, On A Clear Day is a decent frock of a movie. Not on the cutting edge of fashion, but, on occasion, eye catching nonetheless. It surprised me. Perhaps not on the level of Ian Thorpe’s startled glance at the 2004 Athens Olympics when I inadvertently gained access to the warm up pool while trying to find the media observer seats on the first night of the Games, but certainly unexpected. And if you do keep your hand off the remote control for the entirety, (the White Cliffs of Dover, car ferries and Thunderbird 2 all appear in this movie by the way, so don’t be too hasty with the clicking digit), you’ll discover the importance of every pebble washed up on the shore.
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Mark Young, Baggiesboy to some, is a veteran writer and producer in sports television who has covered the last four Olympics with NBC, the last two World Cups, and written for two essential No Masian programs, "Ringside" and "Reel Classics" on ESPN Classic.
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This post is part of our ongoing partnership with The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival which runs from April 25 to May 6 right here in NYC.