Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 13 August

Final Score (Mann, 2018)

The English Premier League foot­ball sea­son starts this week­end after an inter­min­able 11-week hiatus so I thought I would try and find some­thing football-adjacent to cel­eb­rate the fact.

Back in May 2016, West Ham United played their final game at the ven­er­able but age­ing old sta­di­um, The Boleyn Ground at Upton Park, in the heart of London’s East End. The fol­low­ing sea­son they moved their home a few km up the road to the former 2012 Olympic Stadium at Stratford, now known — thanks to a lack of cor­por­ate spon­sor­ship — as the London Stadium.

That final match was a foot­balling tri­umph— a dra­mat­ic 3–2 vic­tory over Manchester United — and an emo­tion­al occa­sion, but it wasn’t the last act for the Boleyn Ground. The always-classy club own­ers ren­ted it out for a few weeks to a film pro­duc­tion and the first steps of the even­tu­al demoli­tion of the facil­ity were helped on by some Hollywood-scale explosions.

Final Score is a cred­it­able action film, not just in the mould of Die Hard but an almost car­bon copy in the first half. The best act­or of all the former wrest­lers work­ing in film today, Dave Bautista1, plays a US Army and private con­tract­ing vet­er­an vis­it­ing London to check in on the daugh­ter of a deceased col­league. He’s become an “Uncle Mike” to the rebel­li­ous teen­ager, Danni (Lara Peake), and has bought her tick­ets to West Ham’s final game at the Boleyn Ground – in a clear sig­nal that the film is a fantasy the last game is a European semi-final against a Russian team.

But that Russian team brings Russian fans, and along with the fans there are a gang of self-styled free­dom fight­ers plot­ting a revolu­tion to sep­ar­ate their fic­tion­al state from the Russian Federation. They’ve wired up the grand­stand with explos­ives, shut down the cell towers and land­lines, taken con­trol of the secur­ity centre and are frantic­ally look­ing for one face in the crowd — Pierce Brosnan as their former lead­er, now liv­ing a football-loving life in London after fak­ing his own death.

Only Mike — and a skinny but com­mit­ted stew­ard named Faisal — can stop them now. While 35,000 fans watch the game from the edge of their seats, Mike and the ter­ror­ists (led by the late Ray Stevenson) battle it out behind-the-scenes, includ­ing a wild motor­cycle chase through the East Stand con­course and up into the gantry above.

Nowhere near as emo­tion­al as the actu­al final match — which could have been called Cry Hard — watch­ing Final Score is a nos­tal­gic trip for me. I once walked on that pitch and, in a very sad state of affairs, I have nev­er deleted the 2016 ver­sion of the FIFA video game from my Xbox so I can still occa­sion­ally play in the vir­tu­al sta­di­um2.

The club com­mit­ted fully to sup­port­ing the pro­duc­tion, much as they did later on when they became the ‘big club’ ant­ag­on­ists of Ted Lasso’s under­dogs AFC Richmond. Co-owner David Sullivan came up with the idea of using the ground as a loc­a­tion and was an exec­ut­ive pro­du­cer. The club also lent former play­ers Rufus Brevett and Tony Cottee to play TV pun­dits who meet a sticky end.

I’m not going to pre­tend Final Score is a great film but it’s bet­ter than a lot of Die Hard clones, helped by being anchored in a place and time that was about to dis­ap­pear3.

Where to watch Final Score

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa, Australia & Canada: Streaming on Prime Video

Ireland & UK: Streaming on NowTV

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Fubo, Roku (free with ads) or Awesome (free with ads)