Well, it’s that time of every-four-years again, and, with the World Cup coming up, I’ve been thinking about some of the great media that’s been made about football. And when it comes to movies, there is one that stands out above all others: Shaolin Soccer.
I first saw Shaolin Soccer when it came out twenty-five years ago, crammed into the tiny indie cinema that was more or less a caravan in someone’s car park with my family because it was the only thing that was age-appropriate for all of us. And I have loved it ever since, this batshit insane comedy-kung-fu-soccer movie from Chinese director Stephen Chow, a strange little masterpiece that I’ve watched over and over and never loved any less.
Shaolin Soccer is a football movie that takes a simple approach: treat the game with as much seriousness as the fans. Oh, and do it through the lens of a classic kung-fu movie, with a James Bond-level supervillain as the antagonist and chemically-enhanced supersoldiers making up the ultimate nemeses of our leading men. Oh, and there’s some song-and-dance numbers. You know, now that I’m writing it out like this, it really does seem like a lot, but trust me when I say that this movie makes every inch of that work.
The movie follows Sing (played by Chow himself), a Shaolin master struggling to make ends’ meet who joins forces with a once-legendary ex-footballer Fung (Ng Man-Tat) to take on the discreetly-named Team Evil to win the national football tournament. And it’s exactly as joyfully silly a film as you would expect, based on a premise like that one, utterly embracing the daft intersection between football and kung-fu with some genuinely fun game sequences that take the action seriously.
The real draw here is the fantastic cast, from Chow’s impossibly charming Sing to his Tai Chi master love interest Mui (Zhao Wei – and let me just say, I am so glad that they actually put some effort in to making her look marginally less than beautiful before the big makeover sequence, unlike basically every other movie that does this trope and just tosses on a pair of glasses and calls it a day) – and that’s not even touching on his brothers who make up the rest of the team. Wong Fat-Yei is everyone’s secret favourite as the perma-smoking Iron Leg, but Danny Chan Kwok-kwan as the barely-disguised Bruce Lee stand-in might pip him to the post, and not just because he plays the goalkeeper. The chemistry is off the charts between everyone here, even those in tiny supporting roles giving something distinct and memorable.
Chow wears his cinematic heart on his sleeve with Shaolin Soccer, making no secret of all the directors and movies that have influenced him. As much as the classic movies of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are obviously front-and-centre here, he plays with a million different references – everything from Looney Tunes to Saving Private Ryan. Instead of getting bogged down, though, the unique nature of the premise lifts it above simple homage, giving it a completely distinct style that’s entirely its own.
Distinct, witty, and completely batshit insane, even twenty-five years later, Shaolin Soccer is as much of a relentless good time as it was when it first released. With that said, I would love to hear about your favourite football movies (if you can come up with any better than this, which, you know, I’d like to see it) in the comments below!
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