Kings of Pong
Deng Chao and Yu Baimei give China’s return to ping pong glory the big screen treatment in classic underdog sport movie style.
Ping POng: The Triumph
Directors: Deng Chao, Yu Baimei • Writers: Li Feng, Liu Pei, Meng Hui, Yu Baimei Yu, Zhang Yan, Zhong Wei
Starring: Deng Chao, Sun Li, Wu Jing, Xu Weizhou, Duan Bowen, Cai Yida, Ding Guansen, Sun Xilun, A Runa
China • 2hrs 18mins
Opens Hong Kong March 16 • IIA
Grade: B
First, a little background. I don’t know a damn thing about “pro” ping pong. Or table tennis. Growing up, ping pong was that game some people had in their basement that you’d try on a lazy summer day if you were blasted and bored. It’s not a “real” sport, ranking alongside luge, curling and trampoline among the world’s silliest. Some fast facts: Ping pong has a governing body y’all, the International Table Tennis Federation (!), which oversees the World Table Tennis Championships competitions. And it dishes out seven different trophies (!!), including the men’s team Swaythling Cup, named for a dead white lady, and Corbillon Cup for women, named for a dead white gentleman. There are five others (!!!), for singles, doubles and mixed doubles – honest to god trophies like the Lombardi Trophy, the Rosewater Dish or the Stanley Cup. It’s almost as if ping pong were a real sport.
But lo, to millions upon millions, ping pong is indeed a “real” sport, and it sits at the heart of Ping Pong: The Triumph | 中國乒乓之絕地反擊, a classic underdog sports drama (in the vein of Peter Chan’s women’s volleyball epic Leap in 2020) with a little nationalism thrown in for good measure. Regardless of what you personally think of the game, there’s no denying directors Deng Chao and Yu Baimei’s Ping Pong: The Triumph hits all the right David and Goliath notes as a Lagaan or a Miracle on Ice for the table tennis set.
Training? Recruitment? Both?
One thing I do know is that ping pong is to China what hockey is to Canada, and the idea that the national team ever truly sucked is unconscionable. But Ping Pong starts in 1991, when China was in a bad place for table tennis. The once dominant men’s team, winners of four straight titles, was decimated by player defections, and its star, Dai Minjia (Deng, Assembly, Shadow), is off coaching Italy’s national team. But home beckons, and his wife, Wang Ying (Deng’s wife Sun Li), is pregnant, so Dai accepts a job coaching the Chinese national team – this despite his modest disgrace at retiring from playing before he actually won a championship on his own. There’s something in here about the Europeans changing the rules and rigging the game and, a whole bunch of racism. No surprise there.
Dai (loosely based on Cai Zhenhua) is all low-key bluster, promising a return to greatness and a championship in two short years. In grand sports drama fashion, Dai gets creative, pisses off his bosses and puts together a squad of misfits and losers: the cocky Bai Minhe (Timmy Xu Weizhou), and the elderly Gong Feng (Cai Yida), constantly poked about being over the hill at 29 chief among them. Of course, Dai’s initially sceptical assistant coach Ni (Liang Chao) comes around and ends up as Dai’s greatest defender (a short scene with a bitchy reporter is hilarious). Does the Chinese team defeat its rival Sweden to reclaim the Swaythling Cup in 1995? Have you ever seen an underdog sports drama? Did you notice the title?
Despite having six writers, including co-director Yu, Ping Pong: The Triumph never makes the members of its ragtag (they’re always ragtag) team more than archetypes to be slotted into the story when the emotional stakes demand them – like when it’s all on the line in the final and the team’s anchor is nursing a wonky shoulder. But that’s the essential nature of the sports drama, and complaining about it fulfilling its mandate is ridiculous. And part of that mandate is inspiring training montages – running in the snow, strength conditioning on the Great Wall – and some furious ping pong in warm-up matches against powerhouses South Korea, Belgium and Germany. There’s something inherently political about sports – anyone who claims otherwise about the Olympics is delusional – so were Ping Pong: The Triumph to miss the opportunity to indulge in some rah-rah-ism would be poor form. The American Broadcasting Corporation isn’t going to make Miracle on Ice so that it can’t crow about the USA beating the Soviets at hockey. Come on, now. Same here.
The rest of the mandate is to capture blistering sports action and white knuckle ping pong matches (I can’t believe I just said that), even though we know the outcome. Knowing how it ends doesn’t diminish DOP Max Wang Da-yung’s polished images and the genuine tension Deng and Yu mine from the slickly packaged feel-good true storytelling. In fairness, the stronger your connection to the material the better the film is gong to play. It’s unlikely to convert non-believers but if you’re already into ping pong, sorry… table tennis get ready to lose your damn mind. — DEK