This Sporting Life: Shaolin Soccer (2001)

Cast: Stephen Chow, Wei Zhao, Yut Fei Wong
Director: Stephen Chow
Country: Hong Kong | China
Genre: Action | Comedy | Sport
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: The following review of Shaolin Soccer is apart of Rowena’s Euro 2012 themed series This Sporting Life which attempts to unite film and football.

In retrospect, no one was more suited to make a film about football than Hong Kong filmmaker and actor Stephen Chow. “Is it possible to use kung fu to play soccer?” one of the characters asks in Shaolin Soccer. The cultural exchange of kung fu and football did not go unnoticed: Shaolin Soccer was not only a massive smash in Hong Kong, it also became Chow’s first international hit. In turn, Chow literally presents a new, spectacular spatiotemporal dimension of the beautiful game to earn a very unique playing position among films on football, let alone Asian films on football.

For those unfamiliar with Chow, he is a superstar in Hong Kong and the rest of Asia. He makes less films now, but during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, Chow was one of the powerful comic cinematic mainstays in Hong Kong cinema. His brand of slapstick comedy; use of the Cantonese language, often encapsulated in the term mo lei tau (roughly, “makes no sense”); and love of Chinese martial arts and idol, Bruce Lee, characterise his work, which often resulted in the upending of genres—as in All For The Winner (1990), which parodied the Chow Yun-fat-starrer God of Gamblers (1989) and propelled Chow and his co-star Ng Man Tat to fame; or From Beijing With Love (1994), which debuted his double duties as director and actor. However, Chow’s comedy aesthetic reached new heights of cinematic interpretation in Shaolin Soccer.

The cultural exchange of kung fu and football did not go unnoticed: Shaolin Soccer was not only a massive smash in Hong Kong, it also became Chow’s first international hit. In turn, Chow literally presents a new, spectacular spatiotemporal dimension of the beautiful game to earn a very unique playing position among films on football, let alone Asian films on football.

For those unfamiliar with football in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Football Association (HKFA) holds several prestigious positions in the history of Asian football: it is one of the oldest football federations founded in Asia in the 1900s, behind Singapore and the Philippines; and it boasts the oldest Asian top-division football league, the Hong Kong First Division League. In fact, Hong Kong autonomy in terms of football is interesting, insofar as its professional league is wholly independent from China’s own top-flight football league and it has been able to maintain a ‘national’ football team while it was a British colony and now as an official part of China. For Chow to have chosen football as the sport with which to weave a narrative of an underdog group of individuals with special kung fu talents is thus significant across many levels, intended and unintended.

Shaolin Soccer is about a group of men of varying success in their lives, but are connected to each other due to their study of Shaolin kung fu in the past. But at the start of the film, each of them has forgotten his specific kung fu specialty due to their everyday lives. The men who bring them all back together again are Sing, aka Mighty Steel Leg, a street cleaner-trash collector/recycler, whose dream is precisely to bring kung fu to everyday life; and Fung, aka Golden Leg, a former football star-turned-coach-turned-bum, due to a lame leg as a result of punishment by fans. Fung’s rival at the time, Hung, planned this punishment. Sing and Fung meet and decide to apply Sing’s wicked kicks to the practice and play of football. They manage to cajole the others to participate in order to take part in an amateur football tournament organised by Hung. More can be said about what happens, but part of the fun is discovering how kung fu and football come together wildly in the film as Sing, Fung, and their team progress in the tournament and realise that kung fu and football can go together. Chow as Sing and Ng Man Tat as Fung constitute one of the many reunions that the two have had since rocketing to fame in 1990. With reason, as both are terrific to watch. The same can be said for the rest of the ensemble, which comes to include Vicky Zhao as a sweet bread-maker with a kung fu style who catches Sing’s attention.

Shaolin Soccer defies gravity as well as the laws of football. In this regard, Shaolin Soccer also defies anyone to remain expressionless during its running time. Chow employs wire-work to stage acrobatic, flying stunts; digital effects to stage cartoon-like dazzling visuals to convey the power of kung fu applied to football; and the metaphor of the pitch as a battleground of power, dignity, talent, dedication, and group collaboration.

Just do not expect extensive footage of football-playing, or rather, conventional football-playing. Shaolin Soccer defies gravity as well as the laws of football. In this regard, Shaolin Soccer also defies anyone to remain expressionless during its running time. Chow employs wire-work to stage acrobatic, flying stunts; digital effects to stage cartoon-like dazzling visuals to convey the power of kung fu applied to football; and the metaphor of the pitch as a battleground of power, dignity, talent, dedication, and group collaboration. How bad can such a film be when espousing such great qualities of the beautiful game? In fact, one of the film’s most riotous scenes is of Sing et. al. trying their football skills (or lack thereof) for the first time, against a rival neighbourhood gang, where the metaphor of football-as-war becomes comically literal. We are talking about comedy and football that is marvelously earthy and senseless, which is nothing short of refreshing.

Shaolin Soccer not only stretches the parameters of nonsense but also representations of football in film, due to Chow’s fearless approach to physical comedy. But while this approach is very much Hong Kong-specific, its emotional and visual appeal transcends this specificity. Part of the film’s transnational appeal, of course, lies in football itself. Though Chow may not be a football fan, since this film is a love letter more to kung fu than to football, it stands as a fabulous (in the sense of being great and of being fantastical) engagement with the sport, football fandom, and imaginings of hybrid styles of play.

Post-scriptum: If you plan to watch the film, watch the original, uncut, 113min running time, and not the ridiculous U.S. edited version. Otherwise, you will miss this gem of a scene.

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Rowena Santos Aquino

Sr. Staff Film Critic

Film lecturer at CSULB. Transnational, multilingual, migratory cinephilia.

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