THE CHAMPIONS [1983]

The Champions (1983)
Directed by: Brandy Yuen
Written by: Brandy Yuen
Starring: Cheung Kwok-keung, Dick Wei, Moon Lee, Yuen Biao

AKA BOH NGAU

HONG KONG

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY: 23rd September, from EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

RUNNING TIME: 91 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

Lee Tong is a farmer who lives in a remote rural village. When he accidently kills someone during a local competition causes him to kill someone, his first inclination is to stay and face the music, but his uncle tells him that the punishment will be severe because the victim had a high position in the community. So instead he travels to Hong Kong and to the home of one of his uncle’s trusted friends, but he’s been dead for three years. Tong quickly befriend Suen, a street footballer who immediately spots the potential playing skills of the newcomer. Encouraged by Suen, Tong attempts to join a professional team, but his dreams are dashed by the arrogant mega-star “The Football King”, who relegates him to ball boy and punching bag, while corruption exists within the team. What a guy with such newfound passion for football to do?

Unlike a great many people in the UK, football is of very little interest to me; I’ve often had guys in pubs start chats about the latest match and I don’t have a clue. So I don’t tend to be particularly keen on watching films about the so-called “beautiful game”, even if I sometimes do succumb to underdog stories revolving around some other sports. However, here is a Hong Kong movie from the Yuen clan about football, and one that was made twenty years before Shaolin Soccer, the film that, for a while at least, made Stephen Chow’s name in the west. In fact Shaolin Soccer took quite a lot from the earlier, much less seen movie, even if it adopts a goofier, more fantastical approach to its football, with lots of CG. The Champion, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the wealth of talent involved in its production and that it comes from Hong Kong cinema’s Golden Age, is probably the better movie and features no CGI whatsoever; instead we’re treated to pure athleticism and precision as a load of people used to employing their skills to engage in martial arts combat with each other play soccer in an outrageous way, a way which actually includes some martial arts, while there are bursts of proper fight action throughout and the comedy mostly succeeds in making the viewer chuckle. Perhaps the main flaw is that the film seems rather too short; some parts of the plot are rushed, while there’s not much of a suspenseful build-up to the final match which disappointingly doesn’t have an audience. Moon Lee’s character Fanny seems like she’s going to be the romantic interest for our hero but almost disappears from the proceedings. Nonetheless there’s a lot to really enjoy in this fast-paced sports comedy where even I was cheering on the team that we want to win.

The appropriate mood is set by a cartoon football becoming the face of a cow and two stickmen becoming the film’s title, before our two main stars Yuen Baio and Eddy Ko displaying their football skills in what’s a marvelous pastiche of the typical traditional  martial arts movie introduction. Then we join Tong by the river that runs through his little village, collecting eggs left by a gaggle of geese accompanied by some slow-motion running before returning home to his uncle and his fitness exercises. Tomorrow is an important day, the day when this year’s incarnation of the village’s competition will take place, and some will be reminded of The Young Master and Dragon Lord. The players, with their hands tied behind their backs, have to ascend a steep ramp that leads to a high table, at the far end of of which is a statue containing a pearl which the winner has to collect. Beginning a recurring theme of money being offered to lose, somebody is offered some money to lose, but is having none of it. The game is a great little spectacle with such highlights as Tong and his major opponent hanging from a high beam and people scaling the beam to slide down then have a really strong man at the bottom push the two in front of him back up. Every now and again a well delivered kick takes place. Eventually Tong is the winner, but he accidently drops the pearl and it rolls into the hands of his main opponent, so Tong kicks him so hard that he’s instantly castrated, dying with his crotch smashing onto the beam, as you do. However, the man had friends, and soon Tong is hiding on his house’s roof while a group of guys burst into his house looking for him.

Tong heads for the big city and a house that should welcome him though text tells us that some houses there are “horrible”. It’s a bit of a shock to see that we’re in modern times, it seeming like we’re way back in time at the beginning. Meanwhile the Sung Sun football team has just lost in embarrassing fashion and their trainer Suen it doing some strict training for their troubles. Tong wonders onto a field that this is happening on and kicks back the ball when it lands near him – but it hits Suen in the face. Whoops! Tong is understandably chased and loses his pursuers in a crowd welcoming the Football King. It’s here where he meets Fanny, a ticket seller who often claims that she only has one more ticket even when she actually has loads. By coincidence her old house is where Tong is supposed to go to stay. And also by coincidence Suen is her brother! Fanny almost falls victim to two muggers, one of whom then pretends to be a cop, the first part to a major comic set piece with expert choreography, which results in, among other things, Tong throwing a watermelon which hits the Football King’s car, then accidently ripping his shirt. Tong is soon training and playing for Sung Sun, and he’s not exactly the best, making mistakes and getting knocked about, but does come through in a fight. The boss of Lung Wan club, wbo’s also the Football King, is also interested in Tong, but only because he wants to make life difficult for him. Tong is only allowed to be the ball boy and is often getting hit, but is still involved in the world of football, so that’s alright, yes? Eventually he’s working for another team and begins to earn big momey, via one of those Hong Kong movie montages over which a song plays.

However you just know that it’s all going to climax with a match between Sung Sun and Lung Wan, with the latter seemingly outclassed. We will cheer on the underdogs, flinch whenever Lung Wan seems to be near to scoring a goal, and wonder how things can get even more out of hand as more and more rules are ignored and being skilled in the martial arts is actually very useful on the pitch. Who knew? Despite the craziness it all stays grounded, with the actors really doing it. Knowing that, this final sequence is even more something to behold, even if it’s merely the last of several over the top football matches which amazingly did manage me despite despite my general lack of interest in the sport. I was kept hooked on the action, which was handled of course by Yuen Woo-Ping’s sons, and which certainly allows Baio to show his incredible athletic abilities, while you’re never far from a gag, such as when somebody thinks that something that looks like in a bush is the ball, when actually it’s the hat of a guy who’s busy making out with this other half, The fighting in-between is fairly frequent but short; at least two brawls seem cut down, perhaps to emphasise that the football is the main emphasis of this film. After a couple of skirmishes, the first real fight concerns Tong and Suen when the team they’ve beaten doesn’t take defeat well and attacks their defeaters who are only Tong and Suen because everyone else has fled. Their opponents surround them but are easily defeated nonetheless. A locker room fight involving the two is a bit more hard edged though that’s nothing compared to a night-time fight outside Tong’s temporary residence which is surprisingly vicious, with hits drawing blood, a spike in the face and a guy set on fire which the camera lingers on.

The brutality in that scene is also surprising because of the general kid-friendly approach of a film which – yes – has its adult jokes which can go down to the level of “Lee Tong has one bigger than yours” but handles them in a way which doesn’t dwell and which very young viewers shouldn’t pick up on.  It’s perhaps a shame that Biao and Wei don’t have a real. traditional encounter which goes on for a while, though they sometime get close, even during a weird tango dancing session where the dancers have to do their usual thing but are allowed to do stuff which might really set back opponents. They come to blows but then they’re seperated. Humour is typically simple but doesn’t cause the film to go off on tangents, the plot always being what most matters. The film’s view of footballl as a corrupt institution where people are constantly trying to make a buck and nefarious outside influences ae trying to make even more of a buck, with matches frequently being deliberately lost, is interesting – unless in Hong Kong this sort of thing is very common? Baio is his usual self; extremely athletic and appealingly awkward in front of the camera. He doesn’t get many scenes with Lee, but we do also get some with his uncle who receives ever better walking sticks as Tong gets richer, and their relationship is one that we genuinely care about. We feel the friendship of Tong and Suen too, while perennial villain Dick Wei has a surprising number of comic scenes where his menace is significantly diminished, from a snake in his trousers to splitting his trousers to  spitting out medicine all over the face of his coach, who also receives a lot of humiliation. Cheung Kwok-keung, who plays Suen, was an actual footballer.

The comedic score  [composer uncredited] perhaps overdoes it at times, but this is generally a rather fresh-seeming and immensely likeable piece –  well, maybe not the astonishingly mean-spirited conclusion!

Rating:

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a brand new 2K restoration
The usual terrific restoration. Bold colours, deep blacks, plentiful detail.

Original Cantonese audio, restored Cantonese, alternative Japanese soundtrack and optional English dub tracks (original mono presentations)

Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release

Brand new audio commentary by East Asian film experts Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) & F.J. DeSanto
Unusually, Djeng doesn’t introduce a track which he’s in; instead the honour goes to DeSanto who calls him “the man who knows anything”, then “the man who knows just enough to get by”, in this track. DeSanto even jokes about he tends to contribute less than Djeng, though actually he contributes a lot, even if Djeng still leads – oh and he says “f***” too, in a slightly lighter track then we’re used to from Djeng and his collaborators. There’s clearly very little information about the film except its mediocre box office performance,  but he does tell us that iti’s set in the ’60s, something I defy anybody to have realised while watching it, identifies songs and tells us a bit about “football manga”, while DeSanto point out the influences on Shaolin Soccer and Chow in general, tell us that a Japanese song during the montage which replaced the Chinese song in the Japanese version, sung by Biao, was popular when he was a kid, and says about the Yuens that “it would be hard put  to find a family so influential” in Hong Kong cinema. A really great track overall.

Brand new audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Leeder and Venema do their typical light and breezy act; where else would you hear someone mention “80s testicles”? I’ve read criticisms of their tracks on movie forums, but I don’t see – or rather hear – any problems. Leeder begins with saying that the Chinese translation of the title, Football Crazy, describes Venema, so later on we do hear a lot of Asian football facts, though I found his telling of a bizarre game between Indonesia and Thailand where neither wanted to play Vietnam so both teams tried to lose, culminating in a defender shooting an own goal, to be very amusing. Then there’s the match between the Jackie Chan stunt team and a group of non-Chinese stunt men where Chan suffered more injuries than in any of his movies. Elsewhere Leeder, who used to work as a security guard, tells us that he once had to throw a very drunk Paul Gascoigne out of a club and thinks he ‘s indentified a Jackie Chan cameo, while Venema lets us know that geese are good for scaring off snakes. This is as compusively enjoyable as ever, despite the usual occasional repeated story.

Superstar Football HK: Brand new featurette by CFK looking at the 1987 Hong Kong celebrity football / soccer team that featured a number of Hong Kong legends including Jackie Chan and Andy Lau [19 mins]
Even though I really enjoyed the film, my heart couldn’t help but sink just a little at having to sit through a football-themed featurette. However, it turned out to be rather fun, partly due to Venema’s enthusiasm. In 1986, Alan Tam recruited a team of celebrities to tour Asian countries, and the notion carried on and on. Many came and went, though some stayed for a very long time. Beginning with Andy Lau as goalkeeper, Venema picks his ideal Hong Kong celebrity team, justifying his choices by discussing what they were like on the pitch and even in other respects. I couldn’t help chuckling when Venema said that Chan was “chaos and a nightmare to deal with” but often left the pitch due to both football and movie injuries. Surprise surprise. Venema taking us to several Hong Kong football pitches is a nice touch, though if you fancy buying a Hong Kong football team sweater, they’re only available on one day a year.

Brand new interview with filmmaker and critic James Mudge [14 mins]
Mudge seems to know and love both football and Hong Kong cinema, so he’s a suitable guy to talk about The Champions. discussing various aspects of it. He thinks that the sport in it could be virtually any sport, sees it as more chaotic then following the typical sports film template, and prefers the films Chow made before Shaolin Soccer. I do too.

Reversible sleeve featuring original poster artwork

Original theatrical trailer 

Japanese trailer

A limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by James Oliver [2000 copies]

Kudos to Eureka Entertainment for releasing a Golden Age Hong Kong movie which has been little seen in the west. They clearly think that it deserves some exposure, and they’re right. This is a most pleasant offering which should keep smiles on the faces of both adults and kids, and with the usual fine audio commentaries. Highly Recommended!