Michael's Movie Grade: F
An insufferable movie about an insufferable character.
This movie about a young man risking everything to become the world table tennis champion seems to be trying to make a comment on just how far someone would go to achieve their dreams even disregarding any sense of morality. This kind of story could work if either the character started out moral and that morality deteriorate as the story went on or if the character started as a jerk but changed into a better person at the end. However, our main character here is an irredeemable piece of crap from the opening credits to the closing credits. He does nothing to win our sympathy nor make us root for him in any way. He simply does one horribly immoral thing after another. The scenes involving a dog especially made me hate this character. The result is just plain unpleasant to watch. For a two-and-a-half-hour runtime it is also irritatingly repetitive. The whole movie is made even more unpleasant by a surprising number of violent scenes (for a film about table tennis) and a slew of supporting characters that also have no sense of reality. The violent scenes aren't especially gory, but they are done in such a way as to make them unpleasant to watch. If there is a point these bits of violence are trying to make, they are lost in a film with a disjointed story and no emotional center. What makes this movie even worse is the ending. While I won't give it away, it obviously expects us to sympathize with our main character and tries to even hit an unsuccessful sentimental note. If so, then the filmmakers should have given us a single reason to care about him and the over two hours that preceded this forced ending.
I know this movie is a critical darling but frankly I can't see one reason to recommend it. Even Timothée Chalamet's all-in performance as the main character is wasted on a character not worth caring about.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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