[Movie Review] Some goals are easier achieved than others in Dream

by Dramaddictally

With a true-story twist on a well-worn trope, sports movie Dream follows an ad-hoc soccer team as they train for the Homeless World Cup. Long action sequences and familiar banter give it a stale structure, but it’s in the heartfelt backstories of its homeless characters where it scores its goals.

 
MOVIE REVIEW

If you’ve ever seen a sports movie about a cantankerous coach tasked with turning an underdog team into winners, then you understand the premise of Dream. Two things set this movie apart, though. First, the ragtag team in question is comprised of homeless men who have no real interest in sports. And second, a documentary is being shot as the team trains for its big tournament, which puts some constraints on their coach.

It’s a film that wants to do a lot of things, but ends up stretching itself so thin trying to do all of them that it never quite hits the mark on any of them. On one side, it’s a sporty action movie with lots of soccer sequences, and on the other, it’s a warm-hearted tale of human lives — specifically those that face prejudice, discrimination, and dismissal by the rest of society.

We open with an introduction to YOON HONG-DAE (Park Seo-joon) — a famous soccer player who’s about to be benched for assaulting a snoopy reporter. As punishment (and to regain public favor), Hong-dae suddenly finds himself in charge of the team that will represent Korea at the 2010 Homeless World Cup soccer games to be hosted in Hungary. (And if you’re wondering: yes, the Homeless World Cup is a real event. In fact, filmmaker Lee Byung-heon got the idea for this script by watching a documentary about Korea’s 2010 team.)

As part of his coaching gig, Hong-dae and the team will be filmed by a documentarian, LEE SO-MIN (IU), who’s hoping to get her big break with an emotional story about the homeless players. For some reason that never feels properly motivated, Hong-dae and So-min have an adversarial relationship right from the start. The camera cuts back and forth as they take their rapid-fire jabs, and the actors do their spunky best to make it work, but the humor falls flat with a tired dynamic and a tone that never sits quite right between comedy and drama.

Hong-dae arrives on his first day at the training field to find that So-min has already selected the lineup of players before they’ve even had tryouts. She needs some drama and she needs it fast, so they’ll be choosing the men that have the most “pitiful” life stories. With So-min managing Hong-dae (and writing him scripted dialogue), his hands are tied to truly manage the team — and the final lineup lacks anyone with soccer skills.

Initially, Hong-dae doesn’t have much interest in leading the team anyway, as his prickly personality keeps him at a distance. We learn that Hong-dae was raised by a young, single mom (Baek Ji-won), who’s now on the run from the law, and his tension with her is both his motivation and his cross to bear.

In a difficult conversation where he confronts his mother about always putting herself above him, he says, “I guess I was born to be in second place.” And we know that this has a double meaning because he’s also always second on his pro soccer team, no matter how hard he works. (First place goes to Kang Haneul in a Midnight Runners reunion cameo that I was not expecting, but was totally happy to see).

As much as we learn about Hong-dae, this isn’t really his story. His character is there as a framing device as the film explores the lives of the homeless team members. The movie excels at keeping its collective focus, which ends up being both its strength and its weakness.

When we dip into the backstories of the players, each has a moving tale of how they came to be homeless (everything from debt to major illness) and they discuss what they’re trying to achieve now. None of them is on the team because they care about winning matches, and none wishes for something so saccharine as a fairytale turnaround for their life. And this is where the film does its best work.

The teammates are played by Kim Jong-soo, Go Chang-seok, Jung Seung-gil, Yang Hyun-min, Hong Wan-pyo, and Lee Hyun-woo — the last of which looks so troubled here that I didn’t recognize him until a flashback shows his character before he was homeless.

As we see their individual stories, we learn that each member has someone in their life that they want to do something for — someone for whom it will make a difference if they appear in this televised tournament. Just like Hong-dae, the motivation for each of these men turns out to be about their quest for love, whether it be from a parent, a partner, or a child (which makes the title Dream take on a different meaning than one would expect from a sports movie).

While the spotlight on the individual players is the most heartfelt piece of the story, there are too many characters to give them all their due, leaving the threads to have a superficial feel even as they’re tied up in the end. The main message, which is about societal discrimination against homeless people, does have a hard-hitting moment, though, around the movie’s midpoint. It comes in a subtle juxtaposition when Hong-dae calls So-min “pathetic” for using the team as a means to get famous — and we know he’s there to gain good publicity too. If we’re being set up to question which of the movie’s characters are pitiful, we might need to look further than the roster of homeless players.

To carry off this message, Hong-dae and So-min are the ones with the redemption arcs. For the rest, there’s a late-in-the-game twist on the usual underdog sports trope where we get a dose of reality on one side, while also getting a happy ending on the other. With a story centered on homelessness — and a clear aim to raise awareness — we see victory take shape in much smaller moments than the final competition in Budapest. In the end, this ragtag team might not be the greatest at scoring goals, but then again, not all goals are achieved on the soccer field.

 
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