ACF 874: Lifting King Kong

LIFTING KING KONG
(aka THE BRONZE MEDALIST)
South Korea, 2009, 120 minutes
New York Premiere

When: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 7:00pm
Where: Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street., NYC,
near the 1, A, C, E Canal St. subway stops

Admission: Free!!!!!
Seating: First Come, First Served
Doors Open At 6:30 PM

Korean Movie Night, which is sponsored by the Korean Cultural Service, continues its current, sports-themed series with LIFTING KING KONG, an interesting take on the rise of the underdog in the unlikely realm of high school girl weightlifting.

If second place is first place for losers, then let¹s not even get into what third place means. Popular actor Lee Bum-Soo plays real-life Olympic weightlifter, Ji-Bong, who quits the sport after a gruesome powerlifting injury. The only job he can find is coaching weightlifting at a small town school. Even worse, it's a girl's school and if there's one group of people on this earth who do not want to bulk up and gain muscle mass, it would be Korean high school girls. Complications ensue.

Downbeat and gritty to the point of being almost nasty, LIFTING KING KONG displays people in all their awful greediness, but this commitment to not flinching from the bad side of life makes the inevitable comeback and triumph of the human spirit at the end feel that much more touching, and that much more earned.