See You Soon is a 2019 drama about a U.S. soccer star who suffers a career-threatening injury in the run-up to the World Cup, and during his recovery, embarks on an epic romance with a Russian single mom.
Soccer in the United States has never really been embraced as it is elsewhere in the world, except when they win, but that’s nothing you don’t know. Either way, the sport has found its way into a number of popular movies where it enjoys more success. Taking advantage of that comes director David Mahmoudieh‘s new mix of on field play and hardcore romance See You Soon, a by the numbers, see-through production that does it entirely by the rules, free of the constraints of needing ever once to be the least bit authentic.
On the pitch, U.S. soccer player Ryan Hawkes (Liam McIntyre) is a superstar, incredibly rich, handsome, and newly-engaged to a stunning young woman (Poppy Drayton). His manager Billy (Harvey Keitel) watches from the sidelines as his boy heads for a new scoring record. However, tragedy strikes when he gets in a devastating car accident while driving drunk, severely injuring himself and limiting his chances for participation in the World Cup as he sinks into medication and depression. Abandoned by everyone, he takes a trip on a boat in the Mediterranean. Onboard, working at the bar, is Russian Lana Kalinina (Jenia Tanaeva), a woman struggling to raise her young son after leaving her cheating husband. Time for a little international healing … if only Ryan and Lana had told each how to stay in touch.
Positioned as an arrogant, oblivious celebrity, Hawkes is set up for the big transition and See You Soon doesn’t even try to keep its cards hidden getting there, the whole thing traveling in a perfectly straight line and if you think that everything in the above paragraph is enough in keeping this goofy romance afloat, Mahmoudieh – along with writers Mike Cestari and Tanaeva – have only just begun, tossing in a bully and a coma-induced child to boot. It’s all toothless and obvious but so sappily laid to bear, it’s sort of amusing. What am I saying? It’s ridiculously amusing.
That’s probably intentional, the filmmakers seemingly trying to bring a cheap dime-store novel to life with all the dressings of such they could afford, including a ship that is clearly not on water and for the most part devoid of passengers so our lovebirds can do their thing (along with a scheming over-the-top coworker who tries to get between them). To be sure, there is nothing genuine about any of it, the fairy tale come to life apron strings keeping this absolutely unbelievable from frame one (despite some decent on location filming). Everything about this production is so blatantly transparent it has no room to be the least bit earnest, a single scene with an old Russian woman and a camera the same age having the only bit of warmth on hand.
No doubt, this is a showcase for the likable Tanaeva, who has the charms, but it’s a misstep in so many ways, failing to really give her the chance to get weighty with the more pressing issues the story offers. Filmed like a Lifetime Channel movie of the week, this is hokey and brash, silly and fluffy, and for all that, maybe all the reasons why it should be watched.