Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer from 2001 popped up in the NetFlix queue for this week's Date Night. Surreal fare, but pure escapist fun (with the romantic streak and sin-and-redemption schtick I'm such an unabashed sucker for). Check your brain at the door, but squirrel your sense of justice into your deepest pocket.
Thankfully, Hong Kong cinema isn't likely to infect the weltanshauung of folks who long for an A-list B-school pedigree dating back to Andover. I say "thankfully," because otherwise Shaolin Soccer would be fodder for a business leadership book faster than you can say "roundhouse kick." Because, when you think about it, all the elements are there:
- The tension between raw talent of the team-members (represented by Sing and his Shaolin "brothers") and hard experience (represented by Coach Fung)
- The Shining Goal, which has more to do with a shot at capital-R Redemption more than it does with making a living at the chosen craft
- The obligatory "Big Bad," represented by Coach Hung and his fancy-schmancy (and illegally doped) team
- The gelling of the team, dually represented by Team Gangster's crossing the line from enemy to teammates...and Mui's last-minute acceptance as a teammate ("I can do this. Trust me.")
For as much as I'm jesting, the sad thing is that, had Shaolin Soccer been a Titantic-scale blockbuster, such a book would have been written. Although, if it had, it might have been unconventional in one sense. Namely, the point when "Mighty Steel Leg" Sing provides concrete examples to support his Kung Fu evangelism to the then-skeptical Fung. He points to the lovely woman who could have caught herself after slipping on the banana peel, the driver who could have saved the hassle of parallel parking by shoving his car against the curb, and the tree-trimmer who could have saved his job by using a sword in lieu of trimmers. And also when Hung, in his turn, demonstrates to his team that learning to play by the rules is only half the game when the other team does not.
More sadly, it's this rag-tag-to-riches blueprint (so often telescoped in movies) that is so notably scarce in the lore of business-building. Because where the fist hits the wooden dummy, most of us are (shockingly) not running GE or IBM or--and it pains me to say this--Avis...or even Mackay Envelope. And, yes, it's all well and good to know to fire a Vice President without undermining the morale of her/his underlings. But the fact is that there's a just a weeeeee bit of a gap between corner-office kung-fu and the street-fighting that serves the Chief Cooks and Bottlewashers of this world. And, so far as I can tell, publishers don't want to commit a whole lot of paper and ink into bridging those states.
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Just passing on a (possible) inside joke that I only now twigged into: Mr. Chow, at least according to his IMDB biography, is (surprise!) a huge Bruce Lee fan. Mr. Lee popularized the Wing Chun ("eternal springtime") style of Kung Fu. According to legend, Wing Chun was a young woman who escaped her engagement to an unwanted suitor by besting him in the martial arts. Her trainer was a (refugee) Shaolin adept named Ng Mui--"Mui" being the name of Sing's love interest...and fellow Kung Fu master. Coincidence? Quite possibly. But I laughed out loud anyway.
