Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: José Luis Gutiérrez, José Navar, Maria Molins, Alvar Gordejuela, Adrián Salzedo, Quim Àvila Conde, Nil Cardoner, Manuel Menárguez, Luis Carlos de la Lombana, Peter Alliss, Severiano Ballesteros, Gary Player, Nick Faldo, José María Olazábal.

Titans will always have time allotted to them in the end; some are so blessed that a film about them or a biopic will come out not long after they have passed on, lest the public mind every have the misfortune to forget about them. In the case of legendary Spanish golfer Severiano Ballesteros, it is highly unlikely that the world will ever forget this genuine talent, the matador of the fairway. However, it does no harm to take a stroll down memory lane and shake hands once more with arguably the most charismatic golfer of all time in the film Seve.

Seve though is not so much a biopic but an open, adoring love letter from a generation of Golf fans to the next, the handling a larger than life character bundled up smartly in a winning smile and with the swagger of a man who never excepted losing once, not even when the end was in sight at the tender age of 54. Unlike Rush, perhaps one of the finest sporting films you are ever likely to see, what Seve does is to re-introduce you to the man who won the British Open, The Masters and who was instrumental in many of Europe’s Ryder Cup campaigns during the 80s and 90s via his childhood in Pedreña, Cantabria, Spain and show the audience just exactly how his fixated relationship with golf took hold of him at a very young age.

For José Luis Gutiérrez, the young man who plays Severiano Ballesteros in the film, it is an honour that he grasps with both hands. His stance and gait, such a marked reflection of the man, is captured perfectly on film, as his demeanour and single-minded outlook, the absolute determination not to lose. A part such as this, where the past is intermixed with footage from great tournaments that Severiano Ballesteros performed in and with voice overs by those who knew the man better that anyone, such as the great Nick Faldo, Gary Player and arguably the supreme voice of golf the great Peter Alliss, could break a young actor in ways that they might never recover but credit to José Luis Gutiérrez as seems to hear every beat and thump of the golfer in his performance.

There could be an argument that the game of golf, like snooker, has lost many of its colourful players, the exciting ones that entertained as well as thrilled but with the likes of Ian Poulter being captured on film forever dedicating the 2012 Ryder Cup win to Severiano Ballesteros, for Justin Rose and the tears of his best friend José María Olazábal Seve, the man from Spain who endeared love and affection from every fan of the sport, for these words and this very well documented film, it is unlikely that Severiano Ballesteros will ever be forgotten.

A very good film in which to celebrate a legend!

Ian D. Hall