Why Shaolin Soc­cer is the great­est foot­ball movie ever made

Is there any­thing more stir­ring than the game of foot­ball at its absolute best? To watch the great ath­letes and teams at work is to be riv­et­ed by the geo­met­ric intri­ca­cy of inter­play; the pre­ci­sion of a pass thread­ed through a seem­ing­ly impen­e­tra­ble mass of bod­ies; the bal­let­ic grace of a fleet-foot­ed drib­ble; or the super­hu­man bod­i­ly con­tor­tion of a spec­tac­u­lar over­head kick. The foot­ball pitch is a can­vas on which play­ers paint their mas­ter­works, sculpt with space, and craft kinet­ic poet­ry, all while a mob of devot­ed fans com­pose a rau­cous sym­pho­ny from the stands.

Yet for all that beau­ty, movies that do jus­tice to the thrill and spir­it of the sport have his­tor­i­cal­ly proven elu­sive. How can a game so replete with visu­al delights, and so sat­u­rat­ed with per­son­al expres­sion, rank amongst the least cin­e­mat­ic of sports? For avid fans of both foot­ball and film, it’s as frus­trat­ing as it is mys­ti­fy­ing that nobody seems to pos­sess the prop­er instincts to make a foot­ball movie that feels tru­ly, swoon­ing­ly roman­tic about a sport that’s always hummed with ten­sion and possibility.

Nobody, that is, except Stephen Chow, that jester from Hong Kong, whose end­less arse­nal of good-natured, asi­nine antics wouldn’t make him anyone’s prime can­di­date to make a totemic foot­ball movie. From the moment he first stepped behind the cam­era on his glee­ful­ly juve­nile Bond par­o­dy From Bei­jing with Love, Chow has per­sist­ed as one of the last great expo­nents of slap­stick tra­di­tion, traf­fick­ing in a brand of absurd phys­i­cal com­e­dy that seems pos­i­tive­ly atavis­tic these days. His movies, with their sim­plic­i­ty, brazen imma­tu­ri­ty, hyper­ac­tive visu­al style, and total lack of cyn­i­cism, feel like the works of an eter­nal teenag­er, brim­ming with ideas and idealism.

To watch them feels gen­uine­ly lib­er­at­ing, none more so than Shaolin Soc­cer, his max­i­mal­ist mas­ter­piece about an under­dog group of Shaolin acolytes who must over­come their per­son­al demons, mas­ter the game of foot­ball, and face off against the malev­o­lent, steroid-enhanced Team Evil to restore dig­ni­ty and pur­pose to their lives. Team Shaolin is spear­head­ed by Sing (Chow), an impov­er­ished Shaolin mas­ter who sees foot­ball as a means of demon­strat­ing the pow­er of kung fu to the world, and coached by Fung (Ng Man-tat), a dis­graced for­mer foot­baller left des­ti­tute and dis­abled after being beat­en by an angry mob for accept­ing a bribe to throw a match.

It might seem strange to sug­gest that Shaolin Soc­cer, a wacky kung fu com­e­dy, remains the purest cin­e­mat­ic expres­sion of the joys of foot­ball, but Chow’s com­mit­ment to goofy may­hem real­ly does some­how crys­tallise, rather than obscure, so much of what makes the sport such a sin­gu­lar phe­nom­e­non. Chow, pre­dictably, dis­pens­es with any sense of real­i­ty, unyok­ing the foot­ball in his movie from the lim­i­ta­tions of human biol­o­gy and ter­res­tri­al physics. When the whis­tle is blown in Shaolin Soc­cer, log­ic gives way to total anar­chy – all mete­oric leaps, flam­ing over­head kicks, and super­son­ic head­ers. It’s foot­ball as pure enter­tain­ment, a fre­net­ic high­light reel of flam­boy­ant per­for­mances and out­ra­geous spe­cial effects, as dynam­ic in its stu­pid­i­ty as any flow­ing counterattack.

It’s all com­plete­ly removed from the actu­al game of foot­ball – I can’t say I’ve ever seen a goal­keep­er use tai chi to pro­duce a hur­ri­cane to wipe out the entire oppo­si­tion team – but then, why shouldn’t it be? The movie is pure fan­ta­sy, unabashed­ly so, aspir­ing not for fideli­ty, but to cap­ture how we envis­age our­selves play­ing the game as kids (or as slight­ly more grown-up kids), pul­veris­ing the ball after an acro­bat­ic leap, or slalom­ing from our own half to score. What the movie has in abun­dance that all those oth­er less­er foot­ball movies are so des­per­ate­ly lack­ing is imag­i­na­tion. Like an unre­fined, unvar­nished young play­er still rev­el­ling in the sheer cre­ativ­i­ty and inspi­ra­tion of it all, the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of the game, uncon­cerned with strat­e­gy or structure.

But for all the full-blood­ed flour­ish­es that make the movie’s match­play so exhil­a­rat­ing, the movie’s great­est thrill is watch­ing its char­ac­ters embark on their indi­vid­ual jour­neys of reha­bil­i­ta­tion. They redis­cov­er, through the sim­ple act of kick­ing a ball about with some old friends, parts of their per­son­al­i­ties that they’d long ago sac­ri­ficed at the altar of mod­ern mun­dan­i­ty. Sing acts as the cat­a­lyst for this recla­ma­tion, an acci­den­tal beat­ing heart for the mass­es, inspir­ing peo­ple to reignite their old pas­sions with his unapolo­getic sin­cer­i­ty. Just watch the sequence in which one of his impromp­tu songs inspires an entire street of total strangers from all walks of life, who’d until that point resigned them­selves to the noth­ing­ness of mod­ern exis­tence, to erupt into an immac­u­late­ly chore­o­graphed dance rou­tine and resus­ci­tate their old hopes of being great artists.

That dance, with its bound­less gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it, is the movie in a micro­cosm. Team Shaolin’s jour­ney from a mot­ley crew of ama­teurs to a cohe­sive, dynam­ic out­fit isn’t so much about study­ing the tac­ti­cal minu­ti­ae of the game as it is about shak­ing off the las­si­tude that they’ve allowed to cal­ci­fy in their lives. While their indi­vid­ual cre­ative sparks inform their dis­tinc­tive styles of play, each dis­en­chant­ed team mem­ber has, like those dancers in the street with their hid­den pas­sions, sur­ren­dered their old joys to the soul-destroy­ing mun­dan­i­ty of modernity.

In dis­plac­ing their old pas­sions and bonds of broth­er­hood, they’ve dis­placed their iden­ti­ties, sim­ply accept­ing that they deserve no bet­ter than the bore­dom and abuse that comes with work­ing a shit­ty job under a shit­ty boss. The foot­ball they play is only as beau­ti­ful as it is because of how much it feels like the ulti­mate act of ther­a­peu­tic self-expres­sion – their actions on the pitch, whether it’s pro­pelling the ball at light­ning speed from their midriff, or strik­ing the ball with such force that it trans­forms in midair into a flam­ing tiger, are an exten­sion of all their most pro­found aspi­ra­tions. The ball in Shaolin Soc­cer is a con­duit through which a person’s inner world blos­soms, allow­ing them to realise their full potential.

Foot­ball is nev­er more exhil­a­rat­ing than when it’s at its messi­est, and it’s in super­charg­ing this mess that Chow becomes the per­fect film­mak­er for the job of mak­ing the great­est of foot­ball movies. There have been good movies about the expe­ri­ence of being a foot­ball fan, and great doc­u­men­taries about the stag­ger­ing highs and lows of football’s mer­cu­r­ial genius­es, but Shaolin Soc­cer still stands alone as the movie that best cap­tures the game’s mag­i­cal abil­i­ty to revert us to a juve­nile state and reveal to us all the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a world vibrat­ing with poten­tial. It taps into our most extrav­a­gant fan­tasies of step­ping onto the pitch, scor­ing the most ludi­crous goals in the most dra­mat­ic of cir­cum­stances, and carv­ing our­selves into foot­ball folk­lore. By com­bin­ing foot­ball with the ridicu­lous, Chow there­in finds the sublime.