Film Review: The Keeper

A UK/German co-production, this tells a story of forgiveness, healing, love and the unifying power of football of any type, whether you like the game or loathe it.

Bert (David Kross) is a German paratrooper captured and traumatised in the Kleve forest in 1944, and sent to a Lancashire POW camp where uptight Sergeant Smythe (an almost over-the-top Harry Melling) tries to break his spirit, as he’s forced to help repair the damage German forces have caused to the area. When he enjoys a football game with the other prisoners, he’s spotted by slightly shonky local businessman Jack Friar (John Henshaw), who insists that Bert play goal for his non-league team, while the lad’s nationality is kept a seriously guarded secret.

Naturally, when the war ends, the kind-hearted Jack agrees to let Bert work in his shop and even live in his house, and it’s here that the expected (and still surprising) romance begins between Bert and Jack’s daughter Margaret (Freya Mavor), who recognises his humanity despite her own pain (and maybe lingering PTSD). Soon Bert is scouted by Manchester City manager Jock Thomson (Gary Lewis) and the truth properly breaks about his past. So can the fans and the greater community forgive him for what he (supposedly) did during the war? And can he forgive himself?

As Trautmann’s story isn’t especially well-known outside the UK, various viewers elsewhere might be unaware that this isn’t some screenwriter’s fancy but a true story, and Bert himself approved of the earliest ideas for the production before his death in 2013. Kross, Mavor, Henshaw and Lewis are all fine too, and the careful recreations of key Man City games between 1949 and 1964 are fairly flawless.

And yes, it is more than just a mere ‘Sport Movie’ (one of my more detested genres), and proves an altogether winning experience.

The Keeper (M) is in cinemas now