With wins at Slamdance and Austin's Fantastic Fest, "Kung Fu Elliot," a stranger-than-fiction documentary about one man's quest to become Canada's first action hero, has begun to amass the kind of cult following and rave reviews its title subject only dreamed of.
Initially starting out as a quirky underdog tale about Elliot "White Lightning" Scott, Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau's film takes a hard left turn as the filmmakers, the people around him and the audience start to come to the realization that Scott isn't quite the delusional-but-lovable dreamer he first seemed to be.
With "Kung Fu Elliot" premiering in Toronto on Friday before expanding across Canada, the official Hot Docs selection is half-character study and half-character assassination, and really, it has to be seen to be believed. Here's five more reasons why you should check out the movie when it comes to theatres near you.
1. See what the buzz is about:
No offense to the Canadian 8mm Independent Martial Arts Film Festival in Vancouver (where Scott's debut low-budget feature "They Killed My Cat" is said to have won four awards, and which may or may not exist), but "Kung Fu Elliot" picked up a pair of slightly more prestigious wins, taking home the best documentary feature awards at Slamdance and Fantastic Fest during its festival run. And with its outrageous central subject and truly bizarre turn, it's easy to see why film festival audiences have been buzzing about the film for months now.
2. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction:
With a story so weird and a cast of characters that often seem like they dropped right out of a Christopher Guest movie, it's not hard to believe that moviegoers are finding "Kung Fu Elliot," well, hard to believe. All that's missing from Bauckman and Belliveau's film is a cameo from Eugene Levy or Catherine O'Hara. But the filmmakers maintain that what you see in "Kung Fu Elliot" all really happened, and that the story mirrors their own surreal journey towards realizing the depths of Scott's self-delusion.
3. Scott is a real character:
Bauckman and Belliveau clearly struck gold with Scott, a self-proclaimed kickboxing champion who sees himself as Canada's answer to Chuck Norris. When we first see him, Scott's busy working on his third film, a no-budget martial arts epic called "Blood Fight" that Scott and his girlfriend/co-star/cinematographer/producer Linda Lum are filming on a point-and-shoot digital camera, while families walk by in the background. But it becomes obvious fairly quickly that the directors are much more interested in exploring the man himself than the making of his unintentionally hilarious DIY films, and "Kung Fu Elliot" transitions from easy laughs into a fascinating character study about the lies we tell ourselves.
4. It's surprisingly poignant:
Sure, "Kung Fu Elliot" has its fair share of absurdist laughs -- like watching Scott dive out a first-storey window jerry-rigged with bottle rockets for one of his movie's big stunts, or relay his ill-advised plans for lighting himself on fire for the final showstopper. But poking fun at Scott's lo-fi aesthetics aside, there's some genuine pathos on display here, and no matter how delusional Scott gets, you can't help but feel sorry for the guy when a Shaolin monk takes one look at his "award-winning" kung fu and almost falls down laughing. Bauckman and Belliveau clearly grow to develop strong feelings towards their subjects over the course of two years, and as those start to come out in the film's final act, it sends "Kung Fu Elliot" in a new and surprising direction.
5. The ending is unbelievable:
"Kung Fu Elliot" travels a relatively familiar arc early on, as Bauckman and Belliveau follow the man who would be Chuck Norris North from Halifax to China and back as he struggles to complete his film. And at first it all seems like harmless fun, but as the movie progresses, Scott's behaviour takes a turn for the outlandish and borderline pathological. As it becomes increasingly clear that his long-suffering girlfriend Linda is getting fed up with Scott's deceptions, the same goes for the filmmakers themselves. And things all come to a head in a conclusion that really has to be seen to be believed, and may need to be watched more than once in order to properly process.
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