Best

Weeks before his death in 2005, George Best insist­ed that peo­ple remem­ber him for his foot­ball skills and ​“for­get all the rub­bish” that made him infa­mous. A new doc­u­men­tary about his life makes that seem unlikely.

Best opens with ex-wife Ang­ie recall­ing the time she mis­took her hus­band for a tramp, set­ting up the sto­ry of a prodi­gious tal­ent prone to self-sab­o­tage. But the fore­shad­ow­ing proves unnec­es­sary. Even dur­ing Best’s ascent at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed in the 1960s – becom­ing football’s first pop star at 19 – reporters keep ask­ing if all the atten­tion and pres­sure will become unbear­able. As it inevitably does, the film maps out that down­ward spi­ral effectively.

A pro­ces­sion of talk­ing heads – for­mer lovers, agents and team­mates – por­tray him as an enig­mat­ic fig­ure addict­ed to women and alco­hol, while Best’s own voice, pulled from pre­vi­ous inter­views, sounds remark­ably can­did and self-aware. But as much as the mate­r­i­al feels care­ful­ly curat­ed, there are gaps.

Cal­lum Best, the North­ern Irishman’s only son, as well as Denis Law and Sir Bob­by Charl­ton, his team­mates at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, are miss­ing. The fact that Best’s scat­ter­shot career took him to clubs in Eng­land, Scot­land, Ire­land, the US, South Africa, Aus­tralia and Hong Kong – some­times play­ing just one game – isn’t clear­ly communicated.

At one point the film jumps for­ward to his death from mul­ti­ple organ fail­ure over 20 years lat­er, aged 59, before work­ing back­wards with pass­ing men­tions of domes­tic vio­lence and a prison sen­tence for drink dri­ving. If that uneven struc­ture is intend­ed to light­en the load, it doesn’t suc­ceed. No mat­ter where you place the parts, Best’s path to self-destruc­tion feels wearing.

It leaves you won­der­ing not only what might have been, but how Best could have believed that foot­ball would be the only thing peo­ple remem­ber him for.