With the Beijing Olympics in everyone’s focus, Hou Yong’s semi-biopic The One Man Olympics, the life story of Chinese national hero Liu Changchun, China’s first Olympics athlete (he competed in the men’s 100m and 200m sprint at the 1932 Los Angeles Games) is timely. A passionate high-profile film, this is the second feature by Hou Yong, the man more readily known as Zhang Yimou’s ace cinematographer in works such as Happy Times and Not One Less. Following his 2004 debut Blossoming Jasmine (Moli Huakai), a poetic female-centred drama starring Joan Chen and Zhang Ziyi, Hou Yong obviously wants to achieve something unconventional in a picture enthusiastically supported by the Beijing Olympics organizing committee and CCTV’s Movie Channel in memory of Liu.

It would be too arbitrary to decide that the director, with substantial capital support from the state (a budget of RMB30 million), has made a formulaic biopic uncritically pandering to the official line. Subtly underpinned by the repressed patriotism and fragmented national pride of 1920-30’s China, the film sets most of its scenes on an American cruise ship – Liu Changchun (Li Zhaolin) and his coach, the overseas-trained ‘Professor’ Song Junfu (Shi Liang), are on their voyage to the Olympic Games in LA. The journey is symbolically challenging and exhausting for both of them but the story is shored up by flashbacks to Liu’s pre-Olympics days; his decisive victory over a Japanese rival and the adventurous escape from Japanese-ruled Manchuria to KMT-ruled Peking.

Most of the time Liu is neither running in a stadium nor are his challengers athletes – he is racing for survival, for dignity, and for any chance leading to his first Olympics. Unlike the heroes in, let’s say, Forrest Gump (1994) (Jenny yells “Run, Forrest, Run” and launches a miraculous chapter in Gump’s life) and the Korean family drama Marathon (2005), based on a true story in which the autistic protagonist feels fully geared up on the track, Liu, despite his many opportunities, is essentially a doomed hero trapped in the impossibilities of his time. Which makes for weighty subject matter, diluted, however, by Hou Yong’s eager efforts to add superhuman touches to this tragic hero: When Liu, seemingly powerless, rises above his instances of pure frustration driven by an overwhelming strength of will to prove what the Chinese could and want to be, Hou unfortunately cannot fully transcend the clichés of mainstream Chinese films.

However without an all-star cast (except special appearances by Mainland heavyweights Hu Jun and Sun Haiying), The One Man Olympics depends on a fresh line-up in which debutant actor Li Zhaolin’s performance oozes confidence – he particularly excels at the superbly shot running sequences, thanks to his previous athletics training. Production values are professional if not slick and include replicating the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from a half-built stadium in suburban Dalian.

Ma Ran