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Review | Zero to Hero movie review: Hong Kong Paralympic champion So Wa-wai’s life spawns a touching sports comedy
- This wholesome biopic is part comedy, part family drama and part critical look at the obstacles disabled athletes face in Hong Kong
- Sandra Ng plays So’s mother with great urgency, while Jimmy Wan, making his solo feature-film directing debut, finds humour where there is usually none
Reading Time:2 minutes
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3.5/5 stars
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The sporting achievements of former Paralympic champion sprinter So Wa-wai and the vital role his loving mother played in those successes inspired Zero to Hero, a wholesome biopic that is part quirky underdog sports comedy, part sentimental family drama, and part critical look at the obstacles and compromises confronting Hong Kong’s disabled athletes.
The film marks the solo feature directing debut of Jimmy Wan Chi-man, who notably co-directed several projects with Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung in the early 2010s. With a Chinese title that translates as Mom’s Wonder Boy, this story is understandably as much about So as it is his mother, played with great urgency by Sandra Ng Kwan-yue.
Zero to Hero opens with a tearful scene about So’s diagnosis of cerebral palsy as a newborn baby. That is followed up by an even more emotionally manipulative scene – of a borderline case of child abuse when his mother forces the hearing-impaired four-year-old kid to stand up for the first time by recklessly putting him on a switched-on factory machine.
The film turns into a feel-good comedy when the 13-year-old So (Fung Ho-yeung), suddenly found to be a running prodigy, is recruited into the city’s para-athletics team by coach Fong (Louis Cheung Kai-chung), and he duly wins his first gold medal as part of the Hong Kong men’s 4×100m relay team at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics.
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