Summary
In the pantheon of sportsing films, this has been one of them.
With Korean arm-wrestling movie CHAMPION (챔피언), you may be forgiven for thinking we’ve reached the fringes of what sports films can offer us. Yet we’re 16 years north of Australian lawn-bowling film Crackerjack, and a good three decades on from Sylvester Stallone’s Over the Top, a film some would argue is the quintessential piece of arm-wrestling cinema.
Mark (Ma Dong-Seok), a Korean raised in the US, is a disgraced arm-wrestler who now works as a bouncer. His old friend Jin-ki (Kwon Yul) convinces him to return to fight for money in Korean, albeit with the intent of making money off fixed matches. Mark is also hoping to reconnect with his birth mother, but after discovering she has already passed, begins a relationship with a widowed half-sister (Han Ye-Ri) and her kids.
Writer/director Kim Yong-Wan doesn’t stray too far from the comeback kid formula, with Mark chasing his “last chance at competing” right down to the letter of the trope. There’s even a training and clubbing montage, showing Mark’s determination to prove he’s better at keeping other men’s arms horizontal. Ma Dong-Seok (aka Don Lee) was an excellent choice to go the distance. His physicality convincingly says ‘wrestler,’ while his jovial personality (including a recurring joke about him being ‘cute’) carries much of the lighthearted emotional core of the film.
Case in point is the secondary plot of Mark getting to know a family he didn’t realise existed. As his relationship to this small clan isn’t clear from the start, Han Ye-Ri’s character seems like she’s wandered in from another film at times. Indeed, much of the saccharine tone of these moments is incongruous with a film that is primarily about arm-wrestling and underground gambling dens. Yet without this sidebar, how else would Kim Yong-Wan include an inspirational hand-holding montage during the film’s climax?
Even with these wide tonal swings, CHAMPION is unquestionably a film that knows its audience. Primarily a showcase for Ma Dong-Seok, and while he plays a better variation on this theme in Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days, it still works for his core fanbase. Much the same way that The Pacifier works for Vin Diesel’s rabid fans, right? Which now begs the question: who would win in a fight between Sly Stallone, Vin Diesel, and Ma Dong-Seok?
2018 | South Korea | DIR: Kim Yong-Wan | WRITER: Kim Yong-Wan | CAST: Ma Dong-Seok, Kwon Yul, Han Ye-Ri | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. (KOR), Fantasia International Film Festival (Canada), KOFFIA (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 15 July 2018 (Fantasia), 10 August 2018 (KOFFIA/AUS)
