Make It to Munich review – uplifting story of a young footballer cycling to recovery

This is an uplifting movie astir a occurrence of mean life: the lightning-fast betterment of the teenage Scottish footballer Ethan Walker aft being deed by a car, and the 745 mile (1,200km) motorcycle thrust helium undertook from Hampden Park, Glasgow, to Munich conscionable 9 months aft the mishap to present the lucifer pennant for the opening crippled of Euro 2024.

Walker – connected a shot assistance successful New York erstwhile helium was struck astatine 60mph – suffered cataclysmic injuries, including 2 encephalon haemorrhages, aggregate fractures, the dislocation of his close genu and a lacerated lung.

So you recognize the interest of Walker’s companions erstwhile helium chooses to thrust hands-free, arms outstretched, treble thumbs-up. But that’s conscionable the benignant of this carrot-topped trouper: resolutely cheerful and un-self-pitying, contempt facing the extremity of his shot vocation earlier it began, and aftershocks of the mishap specified arsenic a lingering code impediment.

Director Martyn Robertson intercuts Walker’s advancement done Scotland, England, the Netherlands and Germany with flashbacks to his recovery. His boon companion connected some legs is orthopaedic surgeon Gordon Mackay, himself a erstwhile Rangers footballer, who rebuilt the youngster’s genu utilizing pioneering ligament repair techniques.

The movie is perchance a small excessively low-incident for its ain bully – the Rhine bursting its banks implicit their way is the worst of it – but is testament to the stout tone with which Walker leads the enterprise. Robertson, who antecedently directed the akin sporting-adversity communicative Ride the Wave (2022), borrows the quiescent contented of his taxable and lets it colour the story.

Amid the punctures and pitstops determination are discreet road-movie epiphanies: Walker accepting, erstwhile his surgeon levels with him, that helium indispensable present absorption connected coaching, not playing, and his wry grin arsenic helium yet acknowledges that his resilience is, aft all, exceptional. With the boy’s parents checking successful by telephone arsenic helium rediscovers his autonomy, the quasi-paternal enslaved betwixt Walker and Mackay is touching.

The interior travel is arsenic important arsenic the trans-European one, a feeling Robertson buffs with speedy lyrical bursts, specified arsenic a drone changeable implicit a poppy field, oregon a spaced-out Walker singing the Spider-Man taxable tune to a spider dangling from a car-park ceiling. Even Scotland getting hammered 5-1 astatine the extremity can’t dampen the tone of this unassuming and heartening pilgrimage.