The 2014 “vanity project” Sam Neill called his worst movie: “Ridiculous”
It shouldn’t be forgotten that movie actors, although rich and famous and talented, are still just people, and therefore just as susceptible to making mistakes as the rest of us. They often do, of course, as the gossip mags and tabloids reflect, but no matter how much sympathy you have in your soul, Sam Neill should not be forgiven for one film he made back in 2014.
Because that year, Jurassic Park star Neill took part in one of the most ridiculous, shameless cash-ins in cinema history, a film about the creation of the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or Fifa, the organisation currently making an absolute mockery of the game and the World Cup over in the USA, and it was funded by Fifa themselves.
That film was called United Passions, which is a joke for a start, and alongside Neill appeared Tim Roth, who should be suitably shamefaced but apparently isn’t quite as much, and French actor Gerard Depardieu, who frankly you might well expect to make such a film.
The movie basically mirrors the creation of FIFA back in 1905, and then tries to spin it into some kind of human interest story, a drama that nobody cares about, and that probably earned the most fitting tribute it could have done when, within months of being released, the organisation was plunged into a massive corruption scandal involving money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud.
Neill played Joao Havelange in the film, a Brazilian lawyer who served as FIFA’s president for 24 years, and who, surprise surprise, was discovered to have been taking more than $20million in bribes over that period. He was succeeded by Sepp Blatter, played by Roth, who was banned not once, but twice, for receiving huge bonus payments. In turn, he was succeeded by the delightful Gianni Infantino, who we are all ‘enjoying’ running the World Cup at the moment.
Writing in his memoir in 2023, Neill decided to go for the ‘ignorance is bliss’ route as to why he took the movie on, when in fact he took it for money, and should really just say that.
Speaking about United Passions, he said, “Possibly the worst title ever of a film. And I’m reliably told (I haven’t seen it) that it is rated as one of the worst films ever made, if not the worst. Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. It was financed by FIFA itself, a vanity project if ever there was one. The offer came, and it came with a lot of money. Ridiculous.”
As for why his fellow actors got involved, Neill continued, “During the filming, Tim Roth and I were having a drink in this rather nice courtyard in this rather nice Paris hotel that the producers of United Passions had put us in. I thought the question needed to be asked. I put down my drink and turned to him. I asked, slightly ruefully, ‘Tim, tell me honestly, do you think we should be doing this film?’ He put down his drink too. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘listen to me. This movie will put my kids through college’.”
When it was released, the film performed historically badly; in fact, it was the worst opening for any mainstream movie ever, earning $918 dollars in its opening weekend. It sports a zero per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is generous, but Neill professes that he is not bothered by that, and that he enjoyed making the film, which is on him. But at least he knows it was a mistake to get involved, saying, “With everything that we now know about FIFA, would I get involved in another project like this one? In all honesty, no. Even I would have to pass”. Which is all well and good once you’ve banked the cheque and made the film already.
