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A techno fever dream about table tennis champions growing up and becoming heroes, PING PONG is the greatest eXtreme sports movie ever made - and the sport is table tennis?!? Sho nuff. By the time the last plastic ball has been smacked into dust you'll believe that a ping pong player can fly. Long-time pals -
loudmouth Peco and dour Smile have come to a crossroads. Smile
is the better player, but he consistently loses to Peco out of a misguided
sense of friendship. Nice of him, but it's led Peco to believe he's
the unbeatable king of the world. When the joyless technician, Dragon,
crushes Peco; and China, a Mainland player who couldn't make it in the
PRC, mops up the court with Smile, it's time to either put up or shut
up. For Sports movies are a grab bag of cliches with every breath of fresh air (BULL DURHAM) inspiring a dozen stale typhoons (MR. BASEBALL). But PING PONG is a hurricane of emotionally complex performances, wild visuals, and narrative brio. Based on a manga by Matsumoto Taiyo, PING PONG perfectly translates every one of his panels -- crammed with twitchy lines and nervous energy -- into live action film. First time director, Fumihiko Sori, shot the entire movie digitally and uses his experience as a special effects supervisor on TITANIC to stuff this flick with visual tricks. Fading players sprout wilting butterfly wings, micron-level close-ups dissect the impact of the ball on the surface of the paddles, surreal flocks of seagulls streak through anonymous community gymnasiums and the hyper-complex editing brings past and present hurtling into one another from shot to shot. The characters are a rogue's gallery torn from the pages of the manga, but none of them are cartoonish. Bowl-haired star, Peco, is played by Japan's hot young thing, Yôsuke Kubozuka. The uni-named Arata plays the Rubik's Cube-twisting, monosyllabic softie, Smile, with his viciously efficient ping pong skills. Hong Kong's Sam Lee, a skater and self-trained actor who's become a badge of authenticity for scores of films since 1997, plays China. He disconnects his normally manic acting style in order to play a remote, self-loathing, self-doubting player who left China thinking he'd become a big fish in a small pond when he reached Japan. Chrome dome, Nakamura Shido, plays the big, bad, Death Star of ping pong, Dragon. A Kabuki star, every one of Shido's movements is beautiful violence. Racing through your
veins at the speed of adrenaline, PING PONG beats America's weepy old
baseball movies to their creaky old knees, while leaving your heart
thudding and your synapses shooting sparks. > Visit the official PING PONG web site (in Japanese only): www.pingpong-movie.com |
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 One
of the many excellent Japanese bands, whose music can be heard on the
PING PING soundtract, are SUPERCAR. |
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2003 Subway Cinema. All Rights Reserved.
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