Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins, Rhys Ifans
Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies, Dunkirk) plays British golfing eccentric Maurice Flitcroft in Craig Roberts’s (Eternal Beauty, Just Jim) shaggy, crowd-pleasing sports comedy.
A dreamer and unrelenting optimist, Flitcroft was a shipyard worker who took up golf in middle age, managed to gain entry to the 1976 British Open golf championship and subsequently shot the worst round in Open history, becoming a folk hero in the process. Mocked by the press and banned by from competition, the indefatigable, shambolic Flitcroft nevertheless returned, gatecrashing competitions with a variety of disguises and fake names and undercutting the pomp of the British golf establishment (much to his eldest son Michael’s embarrassment and dismay).
Recalling other British sporting underdog stories like Eddie the Eagle and Dream Horse, The Phantom of the Open boasts a bright script by Simon Farnaby (that fully exploits the natural comedy of Flitcroft’s antics) and an appealingly generous and whimsical performance from Rylance, ably supported by Sally Hawkins as his long-suffering wife and Rhys Ifans as an uppity golf official.