Huang Bo can't find any way out in CRAZY RACER
CRAZY RACER (Ning Hao, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, June 26, 2:20
Friday, July 2, 10:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.yule.sohu.com
Nothing is going right for poor Geng Hao (Huang Bo). After losing the national bike championship because he hammed it up by celebrating a split second too early, Geng’s life goes into freefall: His coach (Ma Shaohua) suffers a debilitating heart attack, and he loses everything after getting briefly involved with a shady snake-oil salesman, Li Fala (Jiu Kong), who dresses in Superman costumes as he promises that his questionable liquid concoction can turn anyone into a superhero. Soon Geng is a poverty-stricken bike messenger on the run from a Taiwanese drug kingpin and the cops, with a frozen Thai assassin in the back of his truck, and continually getting set up by Li Fala, who has some serious problems of his own. Nominated for Best Film at the 2009 Golden Horse Fillm Festival, CRAZY RACER (aka SILVER MEDALIST) is crazy good, an entertaining farce with absurd characters, a twisting plot, plenty of mistaken identity, Ning Hao’s (MONGOLIAN PING PONG) Guy Ritchie-inspired tongue-in-cheek direction, and, most of all, Huang Bo himself, who plays the sad sack Geng Hao with Buster Keaton-like appeal. Huang Bo, who will be awarded the Rising Star of Asia Award at the New York Asian Film Festival opening ceremonies on June 25, will introduce the June 26 screening and participate in a postscreening Q&A; he can also be seen in Guan Hu’s COW at the festival.