Mark Rylance’s Underdog The Phantom of the Open Gets Lost in the Rough

Does it eat away at Mark Rylance, that his film career missed the late ‘90s/early ‘00s boom times for the Brit-spirational underdog comedy? Probably not; he spent much of that era running through a stunning list of Shakespeare stage productions, and still made time for a Bridge of Spies Oscar. But while Rylance’s subsequent performances have shown some range, he’s also been developing a persona that would fit snugly into movies like Little Voice, Brassed Off!, Tough Tossers and The Full Monty. (Only one of those is a title I made up.) It’s an extension of his Bridge of Spies role: A daft, politely uncooperative man who throws off traditional balances of power. With The Phantom of the Open, Rylance belatedly applies these eccentricities to his own true-life underdog-Brit opus.

In it, Rylance plays Maurice Flitcroft, a humble crane driver in mid-1970s Britain who, to take care of his wife Jean (Sally Hawkins) and their family, puts his own dreams on hold for so long that he doesn’t seem to be fully aware of what they are. In the opening framing device, he talks about a childhood stint with Scottish relatives, when he was briefly encouraged to pursue whatever interested him before returning home to the expectations of a lifer position at the local shipyard. Those initial interests appear to be arts-related—we see him dabbling in painting, and he meets Jean working on school plays—so it’s especially strange that, decades later, he lands upon a different obsession in middle age: He wants to enter the British Open as a golfer.

Far from a lifelong enthusiast, Maurice barely seems familiar with golf. In the movie’s telling, the sport catches his fancy by airing on one of three available channels during a chance late-night flipping session (enabled by a new, tethered-to-set remote control!). In any event, he’s smitten, and his lack of knowledge becomes an advantage; when he fills out paperwork for the Open, he doesn’t think it’s a big deal to check off “professional,” and tournament officials trust him despite a messy application.

With Maurice playing an uneven game, trained in its rules but not its social customs, the stage seems to be set for a real-life British Happy Gilmore; Rhys Ifans plays British Open official Keith Mackenzie, the de facto snob in this slobs-versus-snobs scenario, who wants Maurice off the green. How will Maurice buck the odds, and a competition-worst first-round score, to become a contender?