Six great sports movies for peo­ple who hate sport

For us low-testos­terone types, sports movies have been an easy genre to ignore. So the new Finnish com­e­dy-dra­ma The Hap­pi­est Day in the Life of Olli Mäki has caused some con­fu­sion. Sure, it won the Un Cer­tain Regard prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, but it’s also about box­ing. It’s shot in del­i­cate, sil­very 16mm film, but what about all the bor­ing fight­ing bits?

Luck­i­ly, the film’s roman­tic sub­plot over­whelms the pugilism, and instead of a reg­u­lar under­dog tale it is ​“an account of pro­fes­sion­al sac­ri­fice made for the sake of per­son­al ful­fil­ment,” as our review puts it. So not exact­ly a macho rouser, then. Olli Mäki isn’t the first film to use sport as a Tro­jan Horse to explore some­thing else entire­ly. Here are six movies that aren’t all about chas­ing that big win.

In Off­side, two match­es take place. One is a 2006 World Cup qual­i­fi­er between the Iran­ian and Bahrai­ni nation­al foot­ball teams. The oth­er is a group of girls bent on sneak­ing into the game, scor­ing one on the law that bans women from attend­ing foot­ball match­es, and the bemused guards sent to stop them. Off­side bril­liant­ly shows the lim­i­nal space that Iran­ian women are often pushed into, far­ci­cal­ly upheld when a guard smug­gles one girl to the loo cov­er­ing her face with a foot­ball star’s poster. It’s also an ambi­tious piece of film­mak­ing: shot at a real Iran­ian foot­ball match, direc­tor Jafar Panahi planned two end­ings depend­ing on how the match played out.

Golf is the back­drop to this glo­ri­ous­ly sil­ly film from direc­tor Harold Ramis, which is sat­u­rat­ed with the kind of goofy ston­er humour that is sad­ly miss­ing from the sport itself. It exam­ines the dual social stratos­pheres in elit­ist golf clubs, with the lives of the rich patrons play­ing out on cen­tre stage while the cad­dies pri­vate dra­mas hap­pen back­stage. The large­ly impro­vised script is full of great one-lin­ers; Bill Murray’s gopher-obsessed greenskeep­er was nev­er actu­al­ly giv­en any dia­logue, but end­ed up steal­ing the show with his unscript­ed riffs alone.

In the 1980s, Ayr­ton Sen­na was the gold­en boy of For­mu­la 1, wide­ly regard­ed as the most fear­less rac­ing dri­ver on the plan­et. Asif Kapa­dia, who went on to direct the con­tro­ver­sial Amy Wine­house doc­u­men­tary Amy, uses only archive footage to tell the sto­ry of how the mer­cu­r­ial Brazil­ian skirt­ed death in order to win – until the day his luck ran out. Senna’s unde­ni­able charis­ma and pure love of dri­ving real­ly, real­ly fast means he comes across more like a rock star than a sports­man. Com­bined with the imme­di­a­cy of the sto­ry­telling, includ­ing Senna’s rival­ry with fel­low dri­ver Alain Prost, the film is a mil­lion miles away from watch­ing cars go round and round on a track.

On the touch streets of inner-city Chica­go, two African-Amer­i­can boys dream of break­ing free. They are both giv­en what is seen as a one-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty when they’re recruit­ed by a bas­ket­ball scout for a pres­ti­gious, most­ly white high school. The doc­u­men­tary fol­lows the young men as they strug­gle with the new social envi­ron­ment, which demands aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence, while also being good enough for the hyper-com­pet­i­tive sports mar­ket. A bit­ter­sweet por­trait of race, class and the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem in America.

Paul New­man, at peak radi­ance, plays a small-time hus­tler in New York City’s shad­owy pool halls. He wants to be the best, chal­leng­ing leg­endary pool play­er Min­neso­ta Fats to a game. His fail­ure sets him even more firm­ly into his deter­mi­na­tion, which even his alco­holic love inter­est can’t drag him away from. Shot in del­i­cate black and white, the film ques­tions what it means to win and lose – and when you should prob­a­bly just give up.

The premise The End­less Sum­mer is sim­ple: two young surfers trav­el from coun­try to coun­try, chas­ing the sum­mer sea­son and find­ing the gnarli­est breaks the world has to offer. The direc­tors thought it would just be a niche inter­est hit, but the light, acces­si­ble style, the par­adise scenery and the sexy allure of the new sport end­ed up draw­ing audi­ences and spawn­ing the nomadic surf lifestyle. Snap­py edit­ing and a free­wheel­ing com­men­tary keeps it feel­ing fresh 50 years later.