Director: Kim Yong-wan
Notable Cast: Ma Dong-seok, Kwon Yul, Han Ye-ri
There is a moment in the second half of Champion, a film that follows the sports mold formula almost
exclusively to a ‘T,’ where there is a little television program that is going
through the history of our hero Mark, played with fantastic depth by Ma
Dong-seok. This is, inherently, not an unusual piece for the dramatic sports
film. It is meant to dig into the hero’s past, even so briefly, before the final showdown
so that all of the characters in the film along with the audience are given as
much emotional weight as they can carry before leaping into the dramatic and
tense finale where hopefully it all pays off. Champion does its best to subvert the drama with enough humor
throughout to give it a bit of its own spin, in a cheesy way, and it’s here
that it reaches its own strange height. During this segment, the announcer
talks about how Mark faced adversity as he grew up and that he was something of
an outcast, but it was one movie that changed his life and lead him to start
arm wrestling for the glory that would this final tournament in the last act.
That film was Over the Top.