The Phantom of the Open

r96sk

March 24, 2022

8/10

Much more heartfelt than expected - pleasingly so! <em>'The Phantom of the Open'</em> is a very sweet film, with Mark Rylance being the absolutely perfect lead for it - great performance from him! I also enjoyed the humour, with many lines amusing me - including one that was lost in translation... It's a great (based on a true) story, one I had somehow never heard of even as a sports (golf much less so, admittedly) fan; I did slightly recognise the name Maurice Flitcroft though. Even if yo…

CinemaSerf

April 4, 2022

7/10

Based on the true story of Maurice Flitcroft who was almost as bad a golfer as me, Mark Rylance is on super form. He works at the Barrow-in-Firness shipyard just as it's about to be wound down. Looking for something new to do, he alights on golf - a game he is singularly useless at. Having managed to enter the Open Championship and shoot a round of 121, just about everyone at the R&A wants to be shot of him - and so begins quite an engaging depiction of just how he tried to thwart them and play …

Steve Parker

August 5, 2022

8/10

PHANTOM OF THE OPEN is a hilarious true story of the world's worst golfer, Maurice Flitcroft (played by Mark Rylance). In 1976, Maurice tried to qualify for the British Open and shot the worst round in history. Despite his lack of skill, Maurice became a folk hero and inspired other dreamers to never give up. Craig Roberts directs the film with a light touch, making the most of the absurd situations Maurice finds himself in. Rylance is terrific in the lead role, infusing the character with both …

Peter McGinn

February 26, 2023

8/10

It is a cliché that there are some performers people would watch reading from a phone book. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the leads in this movie, Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins, approach that status for me. I also appreciated and recognized Mark Lewis Jones, though I knew not from where as I watched. As it happens, he had starred masterfully in the modern classic limited dramatic series Chernobyl. But this film is not nearly as serious as that excellent work, focusing as it does on a minor t…