Seve (2014)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Excellent but underrated film

The acting in this movie is really good.

Seve Ballesteros changed the game of golf forever and inspired thousands through his never- ending strive for success. Seve the Movie tells the compelling and inspirational story of Seve Ballesteros life. Director, John-Paul Davidson, captured the struggles Seve encountered through combining dramatic recreations with archive footage. From seeing a young Seve on the beaches of Spain, teaching himself the game with a broken 3 iron strapped to a stick, to becoming one of the greatest golfers of a generation. This film will leave the viewer feeling inspired and ready to take on their passions. Overall this film truly shows how a passion and talent for something will flourish no matter what the obstacles are.

My dad was a huge Seve fan but aside from his major achievements I knew nothing of his life. I was wide-eyed at a bold and emotive picture which opened me up to a heroic journey which shows how even the great champions are made, not born - and often by the sacrifices of others around them, not simply their own. The flashback structure is hardly Memento but all the more intelligible for it. While powerhouse ending is absolute killer - heartrending, inspiring, hopeful, and uplifting at the same time. As the audience poured out into a bright summer's evening, you could tell their thoughts were still elsewhere with Seve. I already have my dad's stocking filler for Christmas.

I am a golfer but still not was rushing to watch a film about golf, until I'd read a few reviews and been recommended by a friend. It was well worth the trip. Superb archive footage (much of it I'd never seen before) lovingly woven into a drama of reflective childhood moments. It's a film which tells Seve's amazing journey with style, emotion and a little humour. Three things I wasn't expecting to get out of a golf film. As a result, this film rises out of the swamp of most sports films, telling a universal tale of breaking out and examining the anatomy of what makes a genius. My wife also loved it, particularly enjoying the key family moments of drama. In truth, I was more into the fascinating footage, but the kid they found to play Seve was from casting heaven (for looks and credibility) and really helps you buy into what was at stake for a poor farmer's son trying to break out of a backwater village with the only ticket he could get his hands on. The drama did drag a little for me in the middle (hence being short of full marks) but the pay-off is a powerful 15-minute closing which had us both blabbing. Strong, insightful, different, and a tearjerker.

Motor-sport is made for the bio-pic treatment, as we have seen with Senna and Rush - fast cars, glamour, money, the international circuit, and so on. Golf, on the other hand, would not be high on most people's list of sports likely for the big screen bio-pic treatment. It really would need a very special person to keep anyone other than real fans hooked for nearly two hours (especially when most people already know the story).Fortunately in Seve golf has that story. This really is a tale where fiction could not come close to the reality - the story of a boy from so far the other side of the tracks that there are not even tracks who gets to the top of a sport more associated with money (and appalling fashion sense) than possibly any other by dint of unusual talent, allied to sheer hard work.Even so it needs a cast that you can believe in - and Seve finds it. Admittedly at the start one wondered a bit about whether this all Spanish-speaking cast would be up to it - especially the young lead - as the initial scene-setting creaked a bit at times, but once things got into their stride the result was impressive.The young lead playing the junior Seve is particularly impressive. What is remarkable is that you do not have to like golf at all to love this film. not only his golfing style looked like the real thing, but he also can clearly play a bit - well that or there is some pretty impressive trick photography or hours of film of missed shots on the cutting room floor.And it all builds to a total tear-jerker of a finale, which is impressive as we all know how it will end.You do not have to like golf (I'm no real fan), think of it as a real life rags-to-riches tale like few others. Go see it.