The openly gay Brit actor Russell Tovey (TV’s Looking) currently wowing audiences in London’s Royal National Theater in previews of a revival of Angels in America, gives a tour-de-force performance as a closeted football player in The Pass. In possibly a career-best, Tovey repeats a role which he first created in the stage play of the same name written by John Donnelly which was the hit of the 2104 season at the Royal Court Theater. Since then he has not only fine-tuned the character, but he has also buffed up his body more, which adds yet another dimension to the whole piece.
The story plays out in three parts, all of them set in different hotel rooms which still gives the movie a slight staged theatrical feel. In the first act, Jason (Tovey) and Ade (Arinze Kene) are two newbie professional footballers who are passing the night together before a big match in the Romania. Both are dressed only in their underwear, and they banter around with a bit of horseplay wrestling thrown in as two best friends would do. There is however tension in the air as they know that only one of them will get picked to play in the team tomorrow, but that is not the only thing that is getting these two young men all hot and bothered.
The second act happens 5 years later and Jason, now a highly successful and famous footballer is about to divorce his wife, and has taken a pretty blonde woman back to his hotel suite. Lyndsey Lisa McGrillis has been paid by a tabloid newspaper to get the dirt on Jason, but her scheme doesn’t go to to plan. When she realizes that her ruse has been discovered and that Jason is happy to play along, it dawns on her why he wants to prevent the real truth about his situation going public.
The final part takes place 5 years later, and this time Jason is in a rather grander hotel suite in Manchester where he has moved in permanently since his divorce, and he is now expecting a guest. It is Ade whom he hasn’t seen or spoken too since that fateful night in Bucharest ten years ago. Ade, who had given up playing professional football that night and now happily gay and partnered works as a plumber, is curious to know why Jason text to come visit him after all this time. Jason, still calculating and self-loathing and now lonely and unhappy too. is desperately trying to find the wherewithal to finally open up about his sexuality and his feelings. He thinks that drink and drugs may help, or even abusing the Hotel Bus Boy, but as he lacks any of that sort of skill that he has on the football pitch, it looks like he won’t score a goal at all tonight.
In this highly homoerotic tale the near naked men bare almost everything except the most important things that that will always keep them apart. Tovey is pitch perfect as the confused closet case who knows that if he had made the wrong choice ten years ago it would have been the end of his career in what is generally a very homophobic sport. He shows a remarkable chemistry with the very talented Kene who, as Ade, who also battle with the fact that he has to deal with his teammates inbred racism too.
This extremely compelling movie which is the feature film directing debut of Ben A. Williams should catapult Tovey to some sort of mainstream movie stardom. It will be interesting to see if he gets his just deserve, as unlike other Brit star actors such as Eddie Redmayne or Benedict Cumberbatch, he is both blue-collar and gay. Traits that will secure his status as a gay icon, an achievement not to be sniffed at, but he deserves much more than that too.
