The list of things that were more universally panned in 2015 than United Passions, the film about FIFA that was mostly funded by the organization, was quite short. Not only was it a horrific box office flop (it made $607 in the United States on its opening weekend), but it was shredded critically – it currently has a 2.0/10 on IMDb and a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
You probably could have seen from a mile away that the FIFA movie funded by FIFA would bomb, which makes it kind of surprising that a highly-regarded actor like Tim Roth would come on board and play the role of the organization’s president, Sepp Blatter. The good news is Roth is aware that the film was bad, and during a Reddit AMA, he said that the only reason he did it was to help his family.
The film is awful (can’t say that because I haven’t seen it) I hated doing it, it was the wrong film but for the right reasons. I had two kids in college so I had to make a decision and it was probably poorly judged, but once you make that decision you have to follow through. It’s a hard road, being in something you don’t want to do, but I’m glad I did it for my family.
Roth also admitted that he went into the film with a much different understanding of how it would approach the rampant allegations of corruption within the organization. The Academy Award-nominated actor said that he thought United Passions “would be much more about the corruption” of Blattter, which wasn’t the case at all – as one review of the film said, “I’ve seen more objective party political broadcasts than this tripe. It is the most extraordinary vanity exercise; a vile, self-aggrandizing, sugar-coated pile of manure where Blatter and Co manage to make North Korea’s Kim Jong-un look self-effacing.”
(via The Guardian)
