Shaolin Soccer
Rating: 
Mark borrowed this movie from one of his friends months ago and we just recently got around to watching it. We tried to watch it in Cantonese first, with subtitles, but the subtitles were going so fast that we just couldn’t keep up, let alone read the subtitles and watch the movie. So we switched to dubbed English, which wasn’t really that bad.
The plot is basically about a bum who was trained along with his brothers by a master of Shaolin and feels compelled to use this knowledge somehow in his life, to make a living. He comes across an old soccer player who was put to rest in his prime by an angry mob and who’s been working for his arch rival for the past 20 years. He was hoping to get a coaching position, but his rival laughed in his face. He comes across the bum and realizes his talent can be applied to soccer. The bum convinces his very different brothers that this is how they need to use their training, so they form a soccer team and enter a tournament which is won every year by the rival’s bizarre team.
I’ve never seen people play soccer like this. It was wild! The movie was very funny, although I just didn’t understand certain things. For instance, the bum (sorry, I remember no one’s name in this) meets a girl along the way who has a horribly mutilated face. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. Through the course of the movie, her face becomes completely clear. It’s never explained what the hell happened or what transformed her face. I’m guessing one of two things. Either her face looked like that because she was alone and transformed the more she fell in love, or her face looked the same all along and we were seeing her face transform into what the bum was seeing the more he fell in love with her.
All in all, definitely worth a watch!
