Release date: January 2011
Kim Sang-nam, a
heavy-drinking, hot-tempered professional baseball player on probation, is
“volunteered” by his manager to coach a high school team at a school for the
deaf in the countryside in order to rectify his bad image and get back into
baseball. At first, Kim is a reluctant recruit for the job but the troubles of
the star pitcher on the team nudge his interest and he begins to take his coaching
position seriously and puts his heart into preparing the team for the Korean
high-school baseball nationals. Apparently, the film is based on a true story.
As a film plot, it’s been done
before: over-the-hill/in-bad-graces professional must scale down and go help
out: at first she/he is unhappy, but then she/he gets with the program and
everybody ends up winning. This film was a cross between Radio Star (Lee
Joon-ik 2006) and Take Off (Kim Yong-hwa 2009), with a little My Piano (Kwon
Hyeong-jin 2006) thrown in. Despite the
trite plot, the film works and, for the most part, kept our interest. It was
way too long, though (144 minutes) for a feel-good vehicle and could have been
edited to tighten it up.
My take: 3 stars
The regular “coaches” get an earful from the
reluctant pro-baseball player “volunteer coach”
the first time he gets to see the team play
(Kang Shin-il, Yoo Seon, and Jeong Jae-yeong).
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