"Pulling John"

"Pulling John" is a documentary centered around two super-heavyweight arm-wrestlers (or "pullers") and their journey to compete against and beat John Brzenk, a man considered to be the greatest arm-wrestler of all time. It is important to point out the purpose of this film at first due to the fact that I was a bit mislead into thinking this was a documentary about John himself. And whilst it has plenty of him in it, the focus is on Travis Bagent and Alexey Voevoda, the two young, super-heavyweight arm-wrestlers, which was a bit disappointing to me. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of John and the montages of him successfully explains him and builds his mythological status, I was just expecting the whole movie to be that. However, with that complaint set aside, this is a good, very fun story to watch. Travis Bagent, a brash, arrogant American, is portrayed as a sort of antagonist to Alexey Voevoda, a humble, spiritual Russian, yet both are united together in their quest to beat John. Another drawback was that the narrative was often as choppy and jumbled as the fantastic Russian techno soundtrack. With random parts about John thrown in here and there with no apparent correlation to the current situation the two younger arm-wrestlers were in, I was often left to wonder if the filmmakers couldn't decide what to do the documentary about, John the giant-killer or the two up-and-coming giants. Despite this, it did portray the three men as more than just sacks of muscly meat, but rather thoughtful, ambitious, and dedicated individuals. In whatever way the presentation may have lacked, it was the subject matter that really did it for me. Who doesn't like seeing two muscly men romping around on a table together, their faces often inches from each other? Okay, not my favorite thing, but this was testosterone personified. Two men. One on one. No one else. A test of who is the best trained and most well prepared. The strongest. You knew who to root for. You knew who you wanted to lose. And you felt empathy for the aging super-puller still trying to live up to the myth he successfully and rightfully created for himself. Who knew that so much drama could be built and felt leading up to a bout that often lasted half a second?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289451/