'Saipan' Review: A Football-drama Framed as a Tense, 90-minute Thriller
- Dan Bremner
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
By Dan Bremner - January 27, 2026
I am not a sports person in the slightest, and football knowledge-wise I tap out somewhere around a FIFA game I last played nearly twenty years ago. Even so, Saipan immediately caught my attention thanks to trailers that pitched it less like a sports biopic and more like a psychological thriller, plus the novelty of seeing Alan Partridge himself in a rare, straight-faced dramatic role. What followed was a genuinely pleasant surprise. I’m still not entirely convinced this particular historical incident needed a feature-length treatment, but as a tightly wound, stylish chamber drama, Saipan works far better than it has any right to.
The film lives and dies on Éanna Hardwicke’s portrayal of Roy Keane, and thankfully, he absolutely nails it. Hardwicke brings a ferocious, barely contained intensity to the role, making Keane feel perpetually on the brink of eruption. He’s volatile, confrontational, and deeply unlikeable on paper, yet Hardwicke injects just enough charisma, reasoning and wounded pride to make him compelling and understandable towards his side of the situation. Every scene he’s in is filled with tension, as though violence could erupt at any moment, and it’s easily one of the most magnetic sports performances I’ve seen in years, regardless of how little interest I have in the subject matter.
Steve Coogan, meanwhile, proves himself more than capable of stepping away from comedy to play Mick McCarthy. It does take a few minutes to fully see past Coogan’s familiar face and voice, but once settled, his performance works surprisingly well. He captures McCarthy as a man caught between authority and appeasement, visibly worn down by egos, expectations, and national pressure. Where Hardwicke’s Keane is all explosive dominance, Coogan plays McCarthy as quietly exasperated and defensive, creating a dynamic that feels less like hero versus villain and more like two men completely incapable of understanding one another.
One of the film’s quiet strengths is how even-handed it ultimately is in presenting the rivalry, refusing to paint Keane as a cartoonish villain or McCarthy as a blameless authority figure. While Keane’s confrontational behaviour is undeniably abrasive, the film gives real weight to his grievances, particularly his fury at the shambolic conditions the squad are expected to tolerate. The poor facilities, substandard food, and amateurish preparation where they don't even have footballs to train with feel genuinely insulting given the scale of what the players are preparing for, and Saipan makes it easy to understand why a hyper-professional, elite-level competitor like Keane would see this as unacceptable. By grounding his anger in something tangible rather than pure ego, the film complicates the conflict, framing it as a clash between ambition and complacency rather than simply a personality implosion.
Director Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa (Cherrybomb, Ordinary Love) lean heavily into the thriller framing, and it pays off. The film is shot with a sleek, restrained confidence, using tight interiors, moody lighting, and creeping tension to turn a professional disagreement into something resembling a face off between opposing ideals. There’s a real sense of claustrophobia as tempers flare and positions harden, and the film smartly keeps its focus narrow, allowing the argument to become a microcosm for larger ideas about authority, ego, dedication and national identity. Even without knowing the finer details of Irish football politics, the emotional beats land clearly and I found it incredibly easy to get wrapped up in.
The 2002 setting is also handled with care. The soundtrack leans into era-appropriate indie and rock selections, and the use of archival footage and period detail helps ground the story without tipping into nostalgia bait. There’s a lived-in authenticity to the environment that makes the events feel immediate rather than historical, especially for those who remember the fallout in real time. For Irish audiences in particular, there’s an added layer of cultural resonance that I could feel even if I didn’t fully share it.
Where Saipan falters is in its overall weight. For all its tension and strong performances, the central incident is, ultimately, one argument and its immediate aftermath. At just over 90 minutes, the film is brisk and never boring, but it still feels a little thin, stretched to feature length by repetition rather than escalation. The final act, in particular, drifts toward an intentionally unsatisfying conclusion that mirrors the unresolved nature of the real-life event, but dramatically, it leaves the film ending with you hoping for a bit more of the fallout.
Saipan may not fully justify its existence as a feature, but thanks to an incredible central performance from Éanna Hardwicke, solid support from Steve Coogan and a sharp, thriller-like presentation, it stands as a smart, contained drama that is far better than you would expect.
'Saipan' is out now in cinemas.
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