During the Straits Cup basketball tournament in Miaoli last September, reigning local champions Taiwan Beer (台灣啤酒籃球隊) were in the process of losing to China's Jiangsu Nangang Dragons when one of the Chinese players elbowed his Taiwan Beer opponent in the face. Two days later, Taiwan Beer's management ignored an apology from the Dragons and removed its team from the competition. Its players, the team said, were afraid of their Chinese opponents.
It seems a little rich then, to say the least, that a new documentary made about the Taiwan Beer basketball team is called Attitude. This, after all, is the team that wimped out of a tournament while the documentary was in production. So what does "attitude" mean? Sportsmanship and professionalism? Or self-absorbed preening?
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
Ostensibly, Attitude - which was produced and financed by basketball player-turned-entertainer Chen Jien-chow (陳建州), better known as "Blackie" (黑人), who is also the team's PR director - is about dreams, friendship and refusing to give up, and its tone is exhaustingly positive. It begins with Blackie reminiscing about Taiwan Beer's recent past and how it rose from being a team that nearly fell apart in 2003 to a second place finish two seasons later. Thanks to unimaginative camera work and editing, the first 20 minutes feel more like a boring speech than a movie.
Things take a lachrymose turn when a junior high school teacher and Taiwan Beer fan surnamed Lin appears. Lin is terminally ill with cancer but is still optimistic and upbeat about life, and his last words, spoken in front of the camera, provide the film's only genuine emotional moment. After Lin dies and Blackie attends his funeral, the tearjerker subplot continues with an episode about basketball star Sam Ho's (何守正) close relationship with his late father and his mother, who he visits in the hospital after practice.
Subsequent chapters ensure that there is no shortage of humor and drama, as basketball fans are wooed with behind-the-scenes glimpses of the celebrity athletes. Viewers see Lin Chih-jeh (林志傑), the SBL's most valuable player, threaten the director and order him to turn off the camera. There's also plenty of brotherly love: players kissing each other on a bus, and horseplay that involves pulling each other's clothes off after practice. Not surprisingly, things come to an end with the team's victory in the 2007 SBL finals, which conveniently (for the film's sake) occurred before its craven exit from the Straits Cup later in the year.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
There is nothing wrong with making a film that seeks to inspire people and encourages them to see the bright and sunny side of things. But it's troubling when a film seems like an extended publicity vehicle that aims to advertise SBL stars much in the same way as the movie Stars (星光傳奇) sought to enhance the celebrity of pop idol contestants in the "talent" show One Million Star (超級星光大道). To be fair, Attitude can at times be reasonably entertaining. But the real never-give-up spirit on display here has nothing to do with sports: it's the moxie that Blackie has displayed by risking more than NT$5 million of his own money on a film that, if it succeeds at the box office, will make himself and his teammates more famous.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION
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