The most popular sport globally and, with boxing, the most corrupt at administrative and ownership levels, soccer/football will be a Rudo y Cursi draw in the rest of the world, though there really is little game footage. For his first feature, director-writer Carlos Cuarón’s original vision was a faux-documentary about a crack footballer who passes from sight into legend. “My buddies Diego [Luna] and Gael [García Bernal] both wanted to play him, . . . so I had to grow the story to two characters.” They are half-brothers, close-knit if different in personalities, life goals and positions played on the pitch, but both devoted to their man-unlucky mother Elvira (Dolores Heredia), which adds in the very oldest rivalry of Judeo-Christian lore.

Subtitles, pervasive obscenity, macho mother insults and some nudity and sex probably will not draw in the soccer moms and kids who made a family hit of Bend It Like Beckham. Despite heavy voiceover musing on sports-paralleling-life, the film is not essentially about that tired metaphor, anyway. Nor it is targeted at the venality that curtails dreams and skews competition, either. The heroes’ sister Nadia (Tania Esmeralda Aguilar) is happily allowed to marry local Don Casimiro (Alfredo Alfonso), and that narco-trafficker and killer secures their ambitions for themselves and for their mother.

Rudo y Cursi evokes, it is true, a feel for brief moments of small-time fútbol on the dusty fields of Tlachatlán, where the brothers work on the banana plantations, and of the big time in Mexico City training sessions and in a nicely realized showdown match.

SPOILER ALERT

As lanky, mustachioed and married Beto “Rudo” [“Tough”] and shorter carefree Tato “Cursi” [“Corny”] Verdusco, Luna and García Bernal have a good time either playing themselves or else acting out most boys’ fondest fantasy. They and the wish fulfillment are brought together by Dario “Batuta” [Baton] Vidali (Guillermo Francella), a marvelously conceived soccer talent scout who might seem minor league but turns out to have connections among the rich and famous. A different knockout lady on his arm every time, and his red convertibles at the start and end indicating a shift in his wallet but not his passions, he is slowed by a flat tire, watches goalie Beto and striker Tato in a weekend game, and has money and backseat room to place only one of them on a First Division club. Prefiguring the finale, a penalty kick is to decide the players’ luck, and the stage-right vs. audience-right mix-up that chooses Tato is innocently humorous and, if resented, does not result in permanent damage.

His name misspelled on his accordion, Tato presses the scout-agent to further his career as a tacky ranchera singer, but for his fifteen percent Baton pressures and pushes the “hick” onto the starting team, where he becomes a prolific scorer and toast of the league and the nation. Devoted to “mango” wife Toña (Adriana Paz) and their two children, Beto meanwhile is called to a Second Division team and becomes its shutout-record goalkeeper when it impossibly goes up to First mid-season.

Showered with celebrity money and perks, Tato has Beto move in with him. The climactic confrontation is inevitable but must wait while the friends-again country boys take separate trajectories. Golden Cleats and rookie of the year Tato loses his magic touch in enthusiasm for his stuck musical career and for his gold-digging celebrity sleep-around fiancée and TV hostess, Maya Vega (Jessica Mas). Toña a momentary success as sales rep for WonderLife health products, the just as green Beto is enticed by Jorge (Salvador Zerboni) into a little bit of coke and a lot of credit at a “Las Vegas-style” high-rolling poker place.

Even amidst blackmail, bullying and threats from gangsters, bettors, teammates and fans, there is humor -- say, a cellphone call about diapers -- and no one gets hurt beyond repair. The brothers’ buoyancy, and Baton’s, forestalls any real letdown, for this is comedy. Wingers Hector and Nestor Morales are the new “diamonds in the rough,” and one way or another everyone gets to follow his star.

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated "R" for pervasive language, sexual content and brief drug use.)