Champions (2008)

Released at the end of 2008, CHAMPIONS is a bombastic and bittersweet wushu action/drama from writer-director Tsui Siu-ming that capitalizes on the popularity and orchestrated nationalism of the 2008 Summer Olympics by focusing on a highly fictionalized account of efforts by a group of wushu performers to earn the right to represent China at the Berlin Summer Games in 1936. Popular TV actor and pop singer Dicky Cheung and Tse Miu, the grown-up child star of Jet Li’s MY FATHER IS A HERO, head a cast populated by wushu acting veterans Yu Rongguang and Xu Xiang-dong in an overlong production that squanders a potentially fascinating real-life story with sickly sweet overacting, clichéd drama and nationalistic propaganda, all of which is made marginally palatable by ample doses of quality wire-fu action overseen by Tsui and Benny Kong (A WORLD WITHOUT THIEVES).

CHAMPIONS was originally conceived of by former child actor-turned-action director Tsui Siu-ming back in 1985 after he was inspired by accounts of the challenges many people faced in the 1930s in their efforts to take part in the Berlin Games. Apparently some supporters could not afford the trip, including members of the wushu team. Tsui had intended to shoot the film in 1987 but it wasn’t until 2008, the year that China hosted the Olympics, that he finally put it together.

Tsui was able to bring on board Yu Rongguang and Xu Xiang-dong, two wushu practitioners and stars from his 1985 genre classic HOLY ROBE OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE. In CHAMPIONS, Yu portrays the wushu team’s coach while Xu is a skilled but uncouth master of Eagle Claw and Mantis Fist, who tries to force Yu into allowing his two sons two compete. Yu is best known internationally for playing the lead villain in popular martial arts movies including MY FATHER IS A HERO and Korean period saga MUSA. Xu, a former wushu champion, is less familiar outside of China but is at least an equally skilled screen fighter who recently had a memorable role in the 2007 kung fu series WING CHUN where he played a northern master who goes up against Yuen Biao. These are the real wushu talents in the film and likely would have been the stars had the film been made in 1987.

Twenty-two years later the starring roles go to Dicky Cheung and Tse Miu, neither of whom entered showbiz with any substantial martial arts training but over the years both have accumulated a healthy amount of screen fighting experience. Cheung portrayed southern kung fu folk hero Fong Sai-yuk in a TV series and Tse Miu fought in another TV series, IRON LION. Their skill are good enough to fill out their fighting roles here given the de-emphasis on serious wushu representation in favor of stylized choreography that incorporates lots of exaggerated wirework. They’re also relatively good actors, not that it matters much as the film’s script is a clunky mess.

The real story of China’s first major wushu representation to the world could have told itself. Six male and three female members of China’s national wushu team overcame great odds at home including an ongoing war with Japan and limited resources to go to Berlin to participate in an out-of-competition event. They wowed international spectators who had never seen Chinese kung fu before. Even German Chancellor Adolph Hitler was impressed by their performance and personally handed each one of them a special trophy. This story has the makings of a great movie but CHAMPIONS isn’t it.

Tsui had the right idea to shine a spotlight on this intriguing little known facet of the 1936 Olympics but he approached it the wrong way completely. Instead of letting facts and the human interest story shine, he basically condenses several uninteresting soap opera plots into two hours and uses it as a poor excuse to toot China’s horn in an embarrassing fashion and shoot a bunch of heavily stylized martial arts sequences that are fun to watch but do little to pay tribute to the efforts of the real 1936 wushu team.

The entire film takes place in China and the process of selecting the team members is diluted by Dicky Cheung’s romantic involvement with a female sprinter (Pricilla Wong) struggling with a neck injury and the entire team’s involvement with not only the disruptive kung fu master On Yung (Xu) and his sons but also a gangster and his martial arts-fighting thugs who are trying to take over a pawn shop where Tse Miu works. Thrown in amongst this clutter is a bunch of like-minded, tenement residents all overacting like extras on a musical stage production. The gangsters and the kung fu master are present to give the heroes someone to fight while the romance and related sacrifices that Cheung makes is present to apparently give audiences something to cry over in a “win one for the Gipper” sort of way.

CHAMPIONS would have worked had they just left out the Olympic references and focused instead on the conflict between this team of wushu athletes, the rival kung fu master and the gangsters. Then at least, we would have been left with a solid wire-fu actioner minus the bloat.

If you can set aside the reality-based drama and events in the film which do not mesh well with the fantasy action, there is considerable entertainment value to be had in the film’s exceptionally well-choreographed fight sequences. It’s actually remarkable given the lack of involvement from any A-list talent with the exception of Yu. It’s even more impressive knowing that Benny Kong has had few action directing gigs in film since the 1990s and Tsui hasn’t directed a martial arts movie since 1999’s FIST OF HERO.

Dicky Cheung put six months of training in for this role and I will say he earned his pay. Cheung and Tse both deliver strong physical performances with a nice compliment of old school flourishes and just the right dash of charm. They definitely both have a future in this genre if the industry will allow it. Wirework in this film is used very well even though I’m typically not a big fan of it in kung fu or wushu movies, the distinction here being that “kung fu” represents traditional Chinese martial arts and “wushu” represents contemporary, performance-based Chinese martial arts that is promoted by the mainland. The stunt team blends both traditional and contemporary martial arts with very distinctive displays of animal kung fu forms and more general wushu movements. Combined with these two styles is dynamic use of wire enhancement that produces some excellent fight work. The best is a battle royale in a warehouse that pits the wushu team members against the gangsters shortly before On Yung shows up with his crew to get in the middle. The fighting recalls some of the best work by Corey Yuen and Yuen Woo-ping during the early 1990s and is worth checking out for this reason.

CHAMPIONS is really two diametrically opposed movies crammed together. One is a sappy and dull drama that misrepresents an episode in Chinese and wushu history deserving a more sophisticated and truthful telling. The other is a simple but physically intense and lightly comic martial arts actioner with an enjoyable mix of classic forms and gravity-defying brawling on a large scale. More of one, less of the other and 30 minutes cut from the running time would have made for a far more uniformly fun movie experience. This is one to watch with the fast forward button at the ready.

Related Topics: competition, Dicky Cheung, Eagle Claw, Genre: Kung Fu, Mantis Fist, Olympics, Tse Miu, Tsui Siu-ming, wirework, wushu, Xu Xiang-dong, Yu Rongguang