Perhaps as a subconscious tribute to the late Rob Reiner, director of This Is Spinal Tap, the greatest mockumentary ever made, I am kicking off 2026 with a review of the 2024 UK film Snooker Man, which won’t be entering the pantheon of great mockumentaries any time soon.
That’s not to say the premise isn’t clever: Johnny “Snooker Man” Bonnar, the 17th-rated lookalike for the great world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, stumbles into an avocation in miniature snooker and pursues a path to challenge the reigning champion Wolfgang in the World Championship of Miniature Snooker (WCMS).
Humorously, the genesis of this original film concept began with Snooker Man director Pete Casserly winning a “best adult short film award” at the Dorking Film Festival in 2020. Casserly’s film was about someone trying to audition for a role as Rodney Trotter, the lead of a musical version of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. In Casserly’s film, the lead actor, Nick Hayles, is said to look like Bruce Campbell, the star of Sam Raimi’s famous cult film Evil Dead. While it’s a decent resemblance, Casserly’s mother said Hayles looked much more like Ronnie O’Sullivan. And, so the germs of the mockumentary Snooker Man were born.
Snooker Man starts on a high note. The opening credits pay tribute to the James Bond movie Skyfall with the fluid graphics, dissolving and reassembling motifs, balletic characters, and super-imposed silhouettes (of a snooker player!). The title song “Snooker Man,” sung by Nekane, also harkens to Adele’s “Skyfall” in musical tone, though hardly in lyrics (“The ladies want him | The gentlemen want to be him | He’s a snooker man”).
But, it’s not too long before you not only realize the film has nothing to do with James Bond, aside from featuring a Daniel Craig impersonator who acts out scenes from Casino Royale, but also that the rest of the movie is not nearly as clever.
The 17th-rated Ronnie O’Sullivan lookalike
First, we are introduced to Johnny Bonarr (Nick Hayles) and his pitiable career starring in terrible movies, such as The Girl With Two Masks; To Kill a Princess; and Chihuahua Man. (Making this even more twisted is these clips are from real movies created by Casserly, who shared in an interview that by inserting these clips, “I kind of made fun of how terrible they were as an apology to the actors who unfortunately had to take part in them!”)
The real Rocket Ronnie O’Sullivan
Johnny made these films with Barry Keane (Stephen Sheridan), an unaccomplished director who unsuccessfully aims to double for British stage thespian Toby Jones. When that fails, Keane launches Prestige Lookalikes, the UK’s lowest-rated lookalike agency, and hires Johnny to double as Ronnie O’Sullivan. He’s the 17th-ranked lookalike, which everyone agrees is pretty pathetic, given he’s impersonating the world’s #1 rated snooker player.
Johnny’s deteriorating career takes an unsuspecting u-turn, when he needs to emulate The Rocket by shooting on a 36” snooker table. His performance, or rather the fact there is a film crew on the premises capturing his cue strokes, enrages the sport’s reigning foul-mouthed champion, Wolfgang, who challenges him to a future match. Soon, there is a new miniature snooker wunderkind making waves, and his name is Snooker Man, a player even capable of running a 147 break in under four minutes.
Now, I’m more than happy to watch a competitive match of a miniaturized sport, especially one that I love as much as billiards. And, miniature sports are not as outlandish as one might think. Fun fact: there are real, professional world championships of miniature golf, miniature soccer (i.e., foosball), table hockey, and Subbuteo table football. And, as the director Casserley notes in an interview, there are also world championships for everything from cup stacking to Rubik’s Cube solving to air guitar playing. So, is miniature snooker really such a stretch?
Notice something missing from that table?
But, match after match after match starts to get downright dull, a far cry from the “nonstop thrill ride of ball potting action” that the WCMS marketing promises. A rogue’s gallery of opponents, including The Ambassador and Hong Kong’s reigning champ Queenie, does little to enliven the atmosphere. And the final match, pitting Snooker Man against Wolfgang, is predictable, unenjoyable, and unforgivable for not even having the right number of balls on the snooker table.
The movie’s post-credits, which include Snooker Man embarrassingly performing his new K-pop single “Baegman Janga (Millionaire J)” that reached 287th in the Korean music charts, only cement the film’s downward creative spiral from its opening credits.
Snooker Man is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. For a limited time, it is also currently streaming for free on YouTube.
Not only is this player the focus of two separate documentaries and (loosely) one parody movie, but he also has traveled across the ocean for a documentary mini-series on pool hustlers, headlined his own TV show, co-authored three crime novels, and been involved in multiple video games.
Yet, in 13 years of blogging, I’ve never written about him until now.
To “The Rocket” Ronnie O’Sullivan, I say I’m sorry. You will be the focus of a lot more blog entries coming soon.
But, now that I’ve appropriately apologized, I’m tasked with reviewing Ronnie O’Sullivan: Seventh Heaven, the first major documentary to profile the seven-time World Snooker Champion, and it’s not too pretty.
Produced by Eurosport and aired in 2022, Seventh Heaven is a one-on-one interview between O’Sullivan and Alan McManus, a retired professional snooker player, who is now a Eurosport pundit. Chronicling O’Sullivan’s life, primarily from his first World Championship win in 2001 against John Higgins to his seventh win in 2022 against Judd Trump, Seventh Heaven blurs the line between documentary and hagiography. Enraptured with O’Sullivan’s career and accomplishments, McManus gushes and glows with admiration and adulation for the Rocket. His feats and records are magnificent; his faults and shortcomings are minimized, if not ignored. Indeed, this is the story of St. Ronnie ascending the pearly gates.
To be clear, O’Sullivan’s accomplishments are beyond incredible. His skills on the table, which are wonderfully clipped throughout the film as each World Championship win is packaged to perfection, are jaw-dropping. His 147 maximum break at the 1997 World Championship is a Guinness record in competitive play. He has achieved more than 1300 century breaks in his career. He has also won a record eight Masters titles and a record eight UK Championship titles for a total of 23 Triple Crown titles, the most achieved by any player.
For those who follow the sport, O’Sullivan’s superhuman skill is not news. And, indeed there is joy in watching Seventh Heaven as a highlight reel. But, how much more interesting would this documentary have been if it had adequately dressed O’Sullivan’s darker side, such as his drug and alcohol abuse, his experienced depression, or his controversial comments that have led to him getting disciplined multiple times?
Thankfully, there are a handful of times when McManus presses pause on the canonizing, such as when O’Sullivan discusses the loss of his father, his “backbone,” when a “part of [him] disappeared…and [he] lost his mojo.” Or, O’Sullivan briefly speaks about his panic attacks in 2000 that led to his first “snooker depression” against John Higgins. McManus even tsk-tsks O’Sullivan for disrespecting Alan Robidoux at the 1996 World Championship when he started to play him left-handed.
But, these moments are fleeting. Too much of Seventh Heaven is a paean to the Saint of Snooker. It’s a greatest hits of World Championship footage that is otherwise overcrowded by surface-level homilies and genuine reflections that don’t exactly rock the baize.
If you’re a snooker fanatic, Seventh Heaven is probably canonical viewing; for the rest of us, let’s hope Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything, the documentary from Studio 99 that aired one year later, proves to be a more compelling watch.
It’s his game. | Brought him fame. | And his name is ‘The Hurricane’.
– Georgie Fame, “The Hurricane” (1982)
The musicians’ names may not be familiar. Georgie Fame is an English R&B and jazz musician, who played with Van Morrison and had three number one hits in the UK. Paul Norton is Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist who fronted the short-lived pop rock band The Runners.
But, if their names don’t resonate, their subject surely does – The Hurricane, aka Alex Higgins, aka one of the most beloved, controversial, iconic, and influential figures in snooker history. His rocket-fast, daring style of play was as legendary as his unpredictable, bad boy persona.
Historians describe with awe and zeal his history-making World Snooker Championship win in 1972 against John Spencer, forever changing the face and trajectory of snooker, or his come-from-behind match ten years later in the World Snooker semis against Jimmy White. Yet, his biography is equally riddled with stories of excess, such as head-butting tournament director Paul Hatherell or forever indulging in his “three vices – drinking, gambling, and women.”
In a sport that has had its fair share of staid, colorless personalities, the Hurricane, who died in 2010, was “an accident waiting to happen,” “a breath of fresh air,” and, for many years, “box office gold.”
Since Higgins first won the championship at age 22, there have been at least seven efforts to tell his story on the screen. I found four of the seven films, and as expected, they vary in their tone and structure, based on their time of release. (Note: the other three films are officially WANTED; please let me know if you can help me to locate them.)
Hurricane Higgins (1972) – WANTED
Until Higgins arrived from Belfast in 1972, snooker largely lacked panache or personality. Clive Everton once described it as, “a folk sport…a lot of people played, but the professional game was virtually dead.” The reigning champion was John Spencer, who had already won the World Championship in 1969 and 1971. Into this largely off-limits prim and proper world entered Higgins, who turned it upside-down by defeating Spencer 37-31.
The Hurricane Higgins 27-minute TV documentary came out on the heels of that victory. In the book Alex Higgins: Snooker Legend: Eye of the Hurricane, author J. Hennessey suggests the filmmakers wanted to portray snooker as a “game on the dole,” with Higgins as its resurrectionist. He quotes Higgins, “They deliberately set out to show the seedy side of snooker. They filmed at this club where there was green mold running down the walls. When they saw it, they said, ‘Great – just what we want.’”
Hurricane’s Wake (1988) – WANTED
Other than a brief BBC Two listing, I can find no information about Robin Anderson’s 17-minute documentary about a “budding snooker player [who] shows his form.”
Alex Higgins: I’m No Angel (1991)
After losing his first-round match to Steve James in the 1990 World Snooker Championship, Higgins got utterly sauced, and then announced his retirement at a press conference, but not before punching tournament official Colin Randle in the abdomen. The day’s debacle led to a 15-month ban from the sport.
During that hiatus, Higgins authorized the 90-minute documentary Alex Higgins: I’m No Angel, created by Joe and Oliver Cox. It was Higgins’ attempt to claim his narrative, though the Cox brothers did a great job of ensuring the documentary was not adulatory toward its subject. Opening with the aforementioned Paul Norton song, the film includes multiple quotes from fellow hellraiser actor Oliver Reed, as well as interviews with promoter Barry Hearn (“he was major box office on the table, but unmanageable off the table”) and his ex-wife Lynn Higgins, who “knew [her] problems were going to start” (after Higgins won his second World Championship in 1982 against Ray Reardon).
The film also highlights other historical highs and lows in the Higgins timeline, including his incredible 16-15 comeback against Steve Davis in the 1983 UK Championship; his “I will have you shot…I will blow your head off” threat against fellow Irish snooker star Dennis Taylor at the British Car Rental World Cup; and his “big penalty for a night out with the lads” when he fell 25 feet out a window. The film ends with Higgins’ promise to return to the sport in August 1991.
Alex Higgins: Rebel Without a Pause (1997)
Higgins did return to the sport, reaching the televised rounds of the 1994 World Snooker Championship, as well as making a 137 the following year, but his best days were long behind him. Alex Higgins: Rebel Without a Pause is primarily a 35-minute homecoming interview Higgins gave to Jackie Fullerton for BBC One Northern Ireland when he returned to Belfast for a nine-frame Sunday World exhibition match against Ken Doherty.
The documentary toggles between the Doherty match and clips from Higgins’ life, including the 1982 Championship against Reardon. Higgins is polite, soft-spoken, but obviously still bitter about the trajectory his career took following his ban from the sport. In one of the film’s more revealing moments, Higgins seethes, “Eight of ten people I’ve met are untrustworthy, thieves, felonious, pieces of shit.”
Like a Hurricane: The Alex Higgins Story(2001)
This hour-long 2001 documentary retells the story of I’m No Angel with a more robust cast of characters and without Higgins’ expressed permission. The film’s opening line makes clear its agenda: “Alex was an accident waiting to happen.” From there, Like a Hurricane brings us back to 1972, when the “urchin from Belfast” upended the establishment, “propelling snooker into the modern world and out of its dark excessive doldrums.”
Higgins the troublemaker was also Higgins the rainmaker; the more chaos he created, the greater the crowds grew. “Alex Higgins brought people into snooker who never had an interest in the sport – it elevated snooker from a backstreet sport into television entertainment.” His meteoric ascent was also intertwined with the rising popularity of Pot Black, the televised snooker tournament show that found its footing when BBC2 began broadcasting in color. By 1980, every match of World Championship Snooker aired on TV for 17 straight days.
Like a Hurricane also digs into his rivalry with Steve Davis, who represented the new face and controlled style of snooker; essentially, “everything Alex was not.” Barry Hearn, who created a stable of corporate, clean players (the Matchroom Team), but did not invite the volatile Higgins to join, commented, “It used to kill Alex inside when he lost to Steve Davis…Davis was the machine, Higgins was the heart” of snooker.
Finally, the documentary probes deeper into Higgins’ troubled relationships with women. His marriage and divorce to Lynn is well-discussed, with the narrator sharing, “Away from drinks, [Alex] was such a nice person, but when he drank, he was terrible. It drove away his wife. And when his marriage was floundering, so was his snooker.” The documentary also digs into his subsequent relationship with Siobhan Kidd, 13 years his junior, who attempted suicide and left years later after signs of battery, and Holly Haise, a 26-year-old escort, who stabbed him three times.
Alex Higgins: Blood, Sweat & Tears (2005) – WANTED
Four years later, RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service media, released a True Live documentary on Higgins called Blood, Sweat & Tears. Though I’ve been unable to watch it, the show seems largely memorable for providing a rare interview with Higgins’ daughter, Lauren, who was one of the most famous babies in the world when Higgins insisted on having her in his arms to celebrate regaining his world snooker title in 1982.
Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion(2010)
Rounding out the cinematic septet is Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion, the 2010 BBC documentary that posthumously retells Higgins’ life story about two months after he died. No longer the ‘accident waiting to happen,’ the opening lines are more hagiographic. The narrator James Hesbitt refers to Higgins as “almost a god,” and Ronnie O’Sullivan, a self-described disciple of Higgins, calls him “ahead of his time.” It is no wonder that the “No Angel” and “Rebel” appellations of previous documentary titles have been replaced with the more endearing “People’s Champion.”
Much of the film obviously echoes the earlier documentaries; after all, there’s no telling the Higgins story without discussing the Championship match against Spencer (1972), the semi against White (1982), the Championship match against Reardon (1982), the UK Championship match against Davis (1983), the headbutt of Hatherell (1986), and the death threat against Taylor (1990).
But, interlaced throughout the footage, players give their respect, citing Higgins’ influence on the sport, the industry, and their individual game. Davis, Reardon, White, O’Sullivan, Taylor, Stephen Hendry – they’re all here with stories and platitudes.
The documentary is perhaps most interesting in its assessment of Higgins’ final years, starting with his diagnosis of throat cancer in 1998. His daughter Lauren reminds us that Higgins said, “Cancer hasn’t got a chance. It doesn’t have a snooker cue.” And sure enough, he did beat the cancer, though he couldn’t truly recover, eventually deteriorating through a combination of respiratory problems, malnourishment, and financial distress caused by a long-term gambling addiction.
The final scene is the Belfast funeral procession, attended by a slew of snooker celebrities and seemingly most of Belfast’s 350,000-person population. As his sister says, “He was the people’s champion, and the people were letting them know on that particular day what they thought of him.”
Many years before portraying iconic characters, such as New York Continental owner Winston Scott (John Wick), saloon owner and pimp Al Swearengen (Deadwood), and crafty conman Mr. Wednesday(American Gods), Ian MacShane played Ian Deegan, a Nottingham demolitions expert with a penchant for snooker, in the 1994 UK TV movie White Goods.
Few people have heard of the movie. Among those that have, it’s seemingly because Mr. MacShane has sex on a snooker table with a 24-year-old Rachel Weisz, still 12 years before her Supporting Actress Oscar. (No nudity, but lots of balls are unintentionally pocketed.)
But, don’t let the lack of familiarity with the film intimidate you. If you can find it – which is a big “if,” as I had to source White Goods on a rare film site that sent me an unmarked, burned DVD – then it’s well worth the watch.
Ian Deegan is rough, gruff, loud, and proud. He’s a boozer, a flirt, and a relatively decent snooker player. The yin to his yang is Charlie Collins (Lenny Henry), a soft-spoken teacher, who paints, excels at trivia, sips his drinks, and steers clear of the baize. They’re black and white neighbors in a blue-collar neighborhood, where surface differences don’t interfere with solid friendships.
Opportunity comes knocking in their working class hamlet when the producers of the game show Snooker Challenge have a last-minute cancellation and need to find a pair of new contestants. Thrust into the hurly-burly of the Lenton Lane Social and Snooker Club, the show’s producers settle on Deegan and Collins. It’s a quotidian decision for the producers, but it’s potentially game-changing for Deegan and Collins’ families, who imagine their lives transformed as a result of winning all those ‘white goods’ (i.e., historically white appliances such as washing machines, fridge-freezers, tumble dryers and dishwashers.)
And, boy, do they win! After a well-played first round when “points are prizes,” the blokes earn quite the booty, such as a month’s supply of white rum and white wine, plus a year’s supply of white cleaning powder. In round two, Deegan defeats the show’s snooker champ and former Crucible winner Paul Ryan. Finally, in the ultimate Pot of Gold round, Collins seemingly defies the odds by correctly answering why Van Gogh painted old boots during his Paris period.
Snooker Challenge is entertaining cinema, but it’s a brilliant lampoon of the British trivia-and-sports game shows that premiered in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Its most obvious target is Big Break, in which teams competed in a series of rounds in which one contestant’s success answering questions translated into advantages for that contestant’s teammate on the snooker table. Similar real shows included Full Swing (golf), and the genre’s progenitor Bullseye (darts).
The parodizing digs deep with its mockery of the game show’s (white good) prizes, imbecilic contestants, a toffee-nosed producer (who refers to the Lenton Lane Snooker Club as a scene out of Jurassic Park 2), a solipsistic snooker champ, and a dim-witted production assistant. But, it really sharpens its fangs with the portrayal of Mickey Short (Chris Barrie), the foul-mouthed Snooker Challenge host, who has a rat-a-tat stream of one-liners disparaging the game show’s prize girl, Lucy Diamond, a former Page 3 glamor model. “Juicy Lucy,” “Lucy with long legs, watch them go,” and “Oh, bounciest one,” are just some of the misogynistic monikers he snipes at her with glee.
White Goods isn’t content to limit its satire to game shows. Though not as sharp-toothed as some better known late-80s/early-90s send-ups of consumerism (e.g., They Live; Falling Down), the film’s final third pivots from game show to neighbor wars, as the outcome of Snooker Challenge is questioned and suggested to be rigged. Deegan and Collins, and even more so, their wives, become locked in a bitter rivalry over who deserves all the show’s spoils.
The formerly friendly families trade barbs as they try to outmaneuver one another for the prizes, once they are delivered. Selfish comments, such as, “Where is my microwave?,” escalate into hurtful insults that sting of classism and prejudice. The tension overflows as Deegan resorts to storing the white goods in his shed and wiring them with a detonative device, lest the Collins family try to steal them back.
It is only once the families children start mimicking their parents and trading blows over the mounds of merchandise do the mothers realize their avarice has gone too far. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say it’s pretty explosive.
In what Ronnie O’Sullivan described as the “greatest comeback in the history of the Sheffield venue,” Luca Betel beat Si Jiahui 17-15 last week in the semi-finals of the World Snooker Championship. The Crucible match was all the more extraordinary because Jiahui, who was ranked 80th at the beginning of the month, is just 20 years old. The Chinese wunderkind’s history-blazing path is a story of national pride (unlike the 10 Chinese snooker players who got banned in January from the tournament because they were charged with match-fixing).
Jiahui’s meteoric journey echoes the increasing popularity of billiards/snooker in the PRC. The sport emerged in China in the 1980s. At the turn of the century, China hosted its first international snooker tournament. The early aughts witnessed the arrival of Ding “Enter the Dragon” Junhui, who became the world’s top player in 2014. Other stars followed, such as Pan Xiaoting, Liang Wenbo, and Yan Bingtao.
Today, over 120 million people play and practice billiards in China. There are 1500 snooker clubs in Shanghai; another 1200 are in Beijing. At the World Snooker College, the only subject taught is snooker, with every student hoping to be the next Ding Junhui (or maybe now Si Jiahui).
Not surprisingly, the swelling popularity of billiards has extended from the baize to the silver screen. In fact, prior to 2010, I’m not aware of a single Chinese billiards film. But, since that time, I’ve discovered eight Chinese billiards movies.1,2
The problem is that, with the exception of A Magic Stick (2016), they cannot be found, at least not by yours truly, or they can be found, but have no subtitles, making them incomprehensible to me. Talk about a billiards movie gap in my corpus! I officially deem these Chinese billiards movies WANTED, and I beseech any reader to help me find them. Please note some of the titles below may be approximate translations from the original Mandarin.
Color Disorder (2010)
Color Disorder (or Color Barrier, perhaps) is a Chinese film about Chai Lu, a naturally gifted billiards player who lacks drive and ambition. At some point, he meets Chang Jianguo, who sees Chai Lu’s true potential. He takes Chai Lu under his wing and prepares him for the National Amateur Billiards “Golden Stone Competition.” While Chai Lu is suspicious at first, at the behest of his girlfriend Meng Rui, he ultimately grows to trust Chang Jianguo and his disciplined billiards teaching style.
Billiards Baby (2013)
Directed by Xie Yihang, this billiards short film is about Zhang Chao and Si Yu, who met one summer as kids and became good friends and lovers as adults. They live in Beijing, where Si Yu relies on the billiards skills she learned from her grandfather.
Midnight Pool Room (2016)
Just 11 minutes, the macabre Midnight Pool Room is about Huang and Liu, who hate the wealthy, so they launch some kind of sinister snooker game to retaliate and make the rich taste the shame they deserve. Sounds like The Menu meetsThe Hustler. I’m in!
Billiard Girl (2018)
In 2018, Xiao Liu directed the 95-minute youth film Billiard Girl. This Chinese billiards movie focuses on Ling Chun (YiYi Deng, who won a Best Actress Lily Award award for the role), a high school student who lives with her stepmother. Ling Chun has always felt unsatisfied with her life, until one day she plays billiards and everything changes. More than a couple reviewers criticized the lack of billiards realism. Maybe they were reacting to the blindfolded shot I saw in an online clip? The complete movie is available to watch online, but there are no English subtitles, unfortunately.
Sasha (2018)
Continuing 2018’s focus on young female billiards players is Chunze Dong’s rom-com Sasha. The movie tells the story of Zhao Shasha, a small-town hotel family’s daughter, who is a billiards genius. She flees to Beijing with Liu Hongyang, a simple, everyday, kind of homely man who dotes on her. At some point, she gets smitten by a hunky gent named Abu, forcing our teen billiards goddess to choose between Mr. Funny, Loyal and Ugly and Mr. Tall, Rich and Handsome. A Chinese trailer of the film is available to watch here.
Metal Billiards (2019)
Among this septet of missing Chinese billiards movies, my list-topper is Bai Xinyu’s 2019 billiards drama Metal Billiards (or Alloy Billiards). The film focuses on Lu Yan, an industrial design student, who creates a robotic arm to give more freedom and mobility to its user. Though he fancies himself a real-world Tony Stark, the invention is dismissed by various companies, and Lu Yan graduates unemployed. At this time, he also receives news that his father is hospitalized, having been injured over a large gambling debt. Lu Yan realizes that his robotic arm provides him a great advantage in billiards, specifically in determining the perfect angles and physics at which to make shots. With his robotic appendage, he can avenge his father and demonstrate that his time as an otaku was not for naught.
While the Metal Billiards trailer is no longer on YouTube, there are some extended clips available to watch on Chinese sites. These clips show that, irrespective of the plot, the movie has a hip design aesthetic and traffics in comically memorable billiards opponents, including a green-mohawked guy tattooed top to bottom, a pair of buxom vixens in French maid outfits, an obese woman with hair curlers who carries a pig’s head on a rope (?!), and some gargantuan yeti whose cue stick is appended with a sinister metal chain. Only ones missing from this Iron Man rogue gallery is Obadiah Stane with a cue stick and, of course, the Mandarin.
Billiards King of Northeast China (2023)
Just released in April, Billiards King of Northeast China (also possibly known as Northeast Champion or Northeast Ball King) is a rom-com from director Yin Bo. The film is about a rural billiards prodigy named Zhou Dafa who solves a kidnapping crisis, gets introduced to a business kingpin, falls in love, and then faces another crisis when the kingpin asks him to throw a billiards championship match or risk harm to his mother. Supposedly, Scottish snooker pro Stephen Hendry, who appeared in the 2017 TV documentary Enter the Dragon: China’s Snooker Star (about Ding Jinhui), makes a cameo in the film.
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Of course, some of this jump is attributable to the skyrocketing output of China’s movie studios. In 2000, China released just 91 films; by 2018, the number was 902 (source: ChinaPower).
This excludes movies made in Taiwan (e.g., Second Chance) or Hong Kong (e.g., Legend of the Dragon; The King of Snooker). I am focusing solely on the PRC.
Back in 2016, I spoke to producer Len Evans about his forthcoming snooker movie Perfect Break, which was wrapping up post-production. (The movie was released in 2020.) Mr. Evans had promised a “low-budget, family film” that would generate a lot of laughs, showcase great snooker playing, and feature world snooker champion Jimmy White and famed snooker commentator John Virgo in key roles.
That promise proved paper-thin. Perfect Break is a perfect bust.
The setup had potential. Bobby Stevens (Joe Rainbow), an unknown snooker player, makes it to the finals at the Crucible. Performing a whitewash, Bobby is one point away from defeating his number one ranked opponent, Ray “Cannon” Carter, when he suddenly falls apart and ultimately suffers a humiliating loss. His girlfriend leaves him, the media suspects foul play, and Bobby disappears behind a luchador mask, relegated to performing trick shots at local clubs and community centers.
But, after that five-minute opener, the movie quickly spirals into looniness. Bobby takes a job as a resident masked snooker player at the Marine Cliffs Entertainment Center. This nondescript venue seems to be a holiday park for mobile homes. It features an offensively stereotyped homosexual security guard, who inquires about Bobby’s “pole” and whistles “toodle-oo” to unlucky patrons. The snooker table is in a room that can barely squeeze ten people. Running around Marine Cliffs is the proprietor Kate (Tia Demir) and her daughter, Sophie (Ella Tweed) a budding matchmaker who is determined to pair Bobby and her mom.
Meanwhile, in the snookerverse, Ray is determined to track down Bobby for a rematch, as he still suspects the original match may have been thrown. He hatches a cockamamie plan to get Bobby invited to the exclusive Jimmy White Invitational Snooker Tournament. This event features eight of the world’s top-ranked players, with unoriginal names like Mark “Magician” Ward (sorry, Efren Reyes) and Joe “Hitman” Waye (sorry, Michael Holt). Inexplicably, the Tournament occurs in some beat-up club room, where the players use cheap wooden cues, and which houses an audience of maybe 20 bored onlookers, including children.
[SPOILER ALERT] Bobby accepts the invite, especially after he learns that he was hypnotized by his ex-girlfriend to throw his infamous match. A little whisper-magic later and the spell is broken. Bring on the nine-frame rematch and a chance for another 147 perfect break.
Perfect Break suffers from a perfect mix of wooden dialogue, an idiotic plot, unconvincing settings, an over-reliance on random music, and terrible production. The snooker graphics look like they were done in PowerPoint. Mr. White and Mr. Virgo, who supposedly were on set, seem like they got Photoshopped into the movie. There is a black-and-white snooker training montage for no reason. There are random color filters applied to scenes and amateur special effects to simulate something as mundane as waking up. Sound issues and muffled voices plague every outdoor scene.
The snooker-playing was equally disappointing, most obviously because there’s surprisingly little snooker on screen. I’m not counting the unimaginative trick shots. Nor am I counting some of the background potting done by Phil Burness, who is the film’s “snooker consultant.”
I’m talking about actual snooker. Unfortunately, the Crucible match occurs off-screen. The Jimmy White Invitational matches are edited such that most of the time the viewer is looking directly at the player lining up a shot, rather than watching the player make the shot. Pots are disconnected from strokes. The few shots we see wide-screen are super basic, making me wonder what kind of bargain the producers got on Mr. Burness’ fees. As for Mr. White and Mr. Virgo, they’re ballyhooed involvement amounts to less than three minutes of stilted dialogue, literally done as talking heads.
If you’re looking for the perfect break to your day, you’re not going to find it with Perfect Break.
There are many reasons to praise Bob Geldof: founder/organizer of Band Aid and Live Aid; co-writer of the charity song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”; lead singer of the Boomtown Rats; recipient of the Man of Peace award.
Starring in Number One is not one of those reasons.
Made initially for television, but released theatrically in England in 1984, Number One is a British snooker movie that is most often referenced for its star-studded cast, including Mr. Geldof as Harry “Flash” Gordon, a down-on-his-luck Irishman who begrudgingly pursues professional snooker as a means to turn around his life.
Other well-known cast members include two-time BAFTA TV Award nominee Alison Steadman, two-time Emmy nominee Alfred Molina, and two-time BAFTA Film Award nominee Ray Winstone. Also appearing are rocker Ian Dury, director Tony Scott (True Romance, Top Gun), and a host of snooker personalities, including commentator Ted Lowe, referee John Williams, and professional player Patsy Houlihan.
Rewind to the early ‘80s in the UK, and it’s not hard to imagine why there would be excitement around a snooker movie. The BBC had been broadcasting Pot Black, a snooker tournament series, since 1969. The 1970s and 1980s produced some of the sport’s most iconic personalities, including Steve Davis, Ray Reardon, Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, “The Whirlwind” Jimmy White, “The Comeback Kid” Dennis Taylor, and Cliff “The Grinder” Thorburn. Their matches – and rivalries – were legendary, turning these individuals into national superstars and making snooker the number one televised sport in the UK (even more popular than football). It’s no wonder this golden era was the subsequent focus of the BBC documentary When Snooker Ruled the World, the TV series Gods of Snooker, and the movie The Rack Pack.
Number One taps into this snooker zeitgeist by focusing on “Flash” Gordon, whose wayward lifestyle has left him in trouble with a pair of crooked cops and in debt to some toughies. He’s a few days away from eviction, having recently had his car repossessed. Stealing from the prostitute next door only buys him so much time, especially when he blows the money in a poker game.
Out of options, but blessed with natural snooker talent, Flash concedes to let the bookie Billy Evans, accompanied by his henchman Mike the Throat, manage him. This includes getting Flash into the professional snooker association and ultimately on the slate to compete in the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible. Billy cleans up Flash nicely, but he cannot change Flash’s penchant for cursing, heckling opponents, throwing cues, picking fights, and even, getting tossed in jail.
Flash’s antics, his cat-and-mouse relationship with the cops, and his contentious interactions with his manager culminate at the Crucible, where he – somehow, don’t ask me how – makes it to finals to play his nemesis Brad Brookie. I won’t give away the ending, but it certainly gives poor old Ted Lowe an ulcer, even if the spectators and fans love it.
Number One not only sought to capitalize on snooker fever, but also to mine it for inspiration, primarily by (loosely) basing Mr. Geldof’s character on the colorful, fast-shooting, trouble-attracting, real-life, Irish-born, bad boy Alex Higgins, whose off-the-table behavior was front page tabloid fodder.1 Furthermore, the Flash-Brookie competition was based on the early ‘80s rivalry between Mr. Higgins and Ray Reardon.2 (Mr. Higgins won the world title for a second time in 1982 after beating Mr. Reardon 18–15, with a 135 total clearance in the final frame.)
Unfortunately, Number One, much like its American billiards movie cousin The Baltimore Bullet, has all the right ingredients, but is a mess of a movie. The first half of the film moves at a glacial pace, pummeling the one-dimensional point that Flash is a bit of a cad, liar, hustler and cheat, all rolled into one rather unlikable and untameable guy. The second half is more interesting, but is also preposterous. Flash’s meteoric ascent to the top snooker spot is risible. There’s no reason to believe he has such skills. Most of the film’s characters are paper-thin; much of the aforementioned talent is wasted; and the movie’s chauvinism reduces the only two women to background screamers or sexpots.
Apparently, the film was screened in Sheffield (where the Crucible is located) the night before the 1984 World Championship and attended by snooker journalists. They allegedly thought it was so bad that they laughed throughout and were too embarrassed to approach Mr. Geldof afterwards.3
Number One is available for DVD purchase. It is not currently available to stream.
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Interestingly, Mr. Higgins’ most scandalous and career-damaging act came a year after the release of Number One, when he headbutted a WPBSA official after being asked to take a drugs test.
This was not the only Ray Reardon rivalry to reach the silver screen. Several years later, in 1987, the snooker musical Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire focused on Mr. Reardon’s rivalry with Jimmy White. Coincidentally, both Phil Daniels (who played Billy the Kid, who is based on Mr. White) and Alun Armstrong (who played the green baize vampire Maxwell Randall, who is based on Mr. Reardon aka “Dracula”) appear in supporting roles in Number One.
Netflix Founder and Co-CEO Reed Hastings is bullish on the Indian market. At the end of 2019, he shared the company’s intent to invest $400 million in Indian content. Whether Netflix’s current financial setbacks will slow that investment is uncertain, but already the company has launched more than 90 original Indian titles.
One of those titles, released this past May, is Toolsidas Junior, a snooker movie written and directed by Mridul Mahendra, and arguably the first full-length billiards movie to come out of Bollywood. It’s a feel-good, feels-long film about 13-year-old Midi (Varun Buddhadev), who seeks to avenge his father’s sixth and most recent loss at the 1994 Calcutta Sports Club Snooker Championship.
Watching his father Toolsidas (Rajeev Kapoor) get humiliated by the “unbeatable” Jimmy Tandon (Dalip Tahil) stings all the more when Midi realizes that Jimmy intentionally preyed on his father’s dipsomania by plying him with liquor during a break in the match.
Unfortunately, it takes more than half the movie for that early epiphany to translate into action. After his initial attempts to learn snooker at an exclusive club hit a wall because his “feet don’t reach the floor” and he’ll “tear the (baize/felt) table,” Midi finds an available table at the Wellington YMC in the seedy, impoverished other side of town.
There, he befriends Mohammad Salaam Bhia (Sanjay Dutt), the laconic ex-national snooker champion, whose daily snooker routine consists of alternating between hour-long naps and practices, while intimidated onlookers marvel in the background.
Salaam Bhia finds Midi’s determination endearing, triggering an 11-month training routine, which consists of offering Midi cryptic aphorisms (e.g., “to see clearly, must befriend the darkness”) and juvenile appellations (e.g., the six colored balls are named Jaundice, Pinky, Blackie, Chocolate, Parrot, and Billoo) and admonitions (e.g., “the left hand is not used just to clean your butt”). Pop cultural references also play a role in Salaam Bhia’s regimen. Various forms of cue ball spin are analogized to the fighting styles of famous Indian action stars. For example, to hit topspin, think of Amitabh Bachchan, who always follows through on his punch.
For viewers who lament the paucity of snooker films over the past twenty years (Perfect Break, The Rack Pack, and Break notwithstanding), Toolsidas Junior will likely offer little consolation. The opening scene, with its meticulous attention to brushing, chalking, and ironing the baize before the match begins, suggests the film will devote lavish attention to billiards. But, while snooker is essential to the plot, the sport itself gets proportionally less on-camera time than one would expect.
This is true even for the predictable ending at the 1995 championship, when Midi plays under the moniker Toolsidas Junior. The snooker sequences just don’t dazzle, though it’s difficult to begrudge the film, given it’s impossible not to root for the young cherubic underdog.
Interestingly, Toolsidas Junior opens by saying the film is “inspired by true events,” though the closing credits clarify the film is at least semi-autobiographical for the director. In an interview, Mr. Mahendra shared, “Snooker has been a very pivotal part of my life, especially because of the memories it beholds with my father. Toolsidas Junior depicts one of the most cherished parts of my life. I fought hard to bring my father glory back then and I wanted to do the same by making Toolsidas Junior.”
Alas, this odic film carries with it a sad epilogue. Mr. Mahendra had arranged a special screening of Toolsidas Junior for his real father and Rajiv Kapoor, who returned to acting after three decades to play Toolsidas. However, both men – the real father and the on-screen one – passed away in the same year before the film’s release.
Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, completed in 1827, consists of 24 “truly terrible songs, which affected [him] more than any others.” Composed almost entirely in minor keys, the songs and lyrics sound sad, detailing not only the fateful journey of a nameless narrator, but also evoking Schubert’s own personal condition, having recently contracted syphilis. He died just one year later.[1]
The coda to Winterreise is “Der Leiermann” (The Hurdy Gurdy Man). It is about the narrator’s despair and the complete deterioration of his mental state. The lyrics, written by Wilhelm Müller, mention a man who “with numb fingers, plays the best he can…no one wants to listen, no one looks at him.”
It is in words, sound, and spirit, the perfect song to ominously flow through director Louis-Jack’s 16-minute film, Petrichor, completed in mid-2020 and currently on the festival circuit. The movie is a haunting snapshot of a washed-up, former snooker wunderkind preparing for his final match and unable to accept his career ended some time ago.
From the opening piano chords of “Der Leiermann,” Petrichor evokes a disturbing, spectral sensation. The viewer is intently and intimately focused on a snooker table, but the experience is slightly unnatural. The camera pans right to left and a bodiless, white-gloved referee completes the rack, even as a light dust falls over the baize.
After the film’s title is revealed, the movie abruptly cuts to the backside of a balding man, probably in his 50s, with greasy hair, an unshaven face, and a disturbing paunch drooping over his mustard-colored underwear, the only clothing the man has on. He looks jaundiced, smoking a cigarette, and splashing vodka into a used plastic water bottle that he uncaps with his teeth. He’s in some sort of industrial bathroom, talking to a man in the mirror. The viewer does not want to be in the room, and neither does he.
The viewer soon learns this man is Liam “Lightning” Daniels (played by Paul Kaye, who Game of Thrones fans will recognize as Thoros of Myr), a three-time world snooker championship finalist, the People’s Champion, the Force of Nature. Daniels enters the snooker hall to the sound of a roaring crowd, but like the man in the mirror, it’s all in his head, as the dreary room houses maybe 10 people, including his opponent.
I won’t share more about what happens, but the ending is shot as beautifully as the opening. The viewer hovers above Daniels, watching him play, but also watching him fade ever farther into the distance. (A special shout-out to “The Cream of Devon” Andy Hicks, who is credited as both a snooker consultant on the film and the stunt double for Mr. Kaye.)
Petrichor is intentionally unsettling and spookish. This is not a love letter to snooker, though the director has shared that “before he even knew the rules, he was utterly mesmerized by [snooker] on TV.” Rather, this is a film about the “psychological warfare on the table, a life lived from a suitcase and relentless losses that have left [Daniels] a shell of a man.” Louis-Jack continues:
“Snooker has an incredible history of amazing characters. Many of the most compelling players to watch – the mercurial geniuses of the green baize – have experienced severe mental illness and volatile personal lives…I thought that a portrait of a snooker player would not only make for thrilling drama but could, in turn, be a powerful vehicle for exploring mental illness.”[2]
It doesn’t take much Googling to confirm Louis-Jack’s assessment of the damaging effect snooker can have on individuals’ mental health. The five-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is probably the sport’s most vocal critic. During various parts of his magnificent career, Mr. O’Sullivan has been heavily involved in alcohol and drugs as a way to combat his self-coined “snooker depression.” Speaking to BBC’s Don’t Tell Me the Score podcast last year, Mr. O’Sullivan said: “Snooker is a really hard sport, and if I had my time over again, I definitely wouldn’t choose snooker as a sport to pursue.”[3]
Mark Allen, who won the Triple Crown title at the 2018 Masters tournament, has been similarly outspoken, directly linking his depression to his life as a long-distance snooker player. So too have snooker professionals Martin Gould and Michael White shared their struggles with the illness. In fact, the issue became so prominent that in 2017 the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) announced partnerships with both Talking Solutions Ltd and with the SOS Silence of Suicide group to support snooker players struggling with mental health issues.
Research has shown that social isolation and depression are closely linked. Therefore, is it really a surprise that snooker players, who are constantly traveling and practicing alone, are at greater risk of suffering from depression than other athletes, especially those who play on teams or who are supported by coaches and trainers?
While Petrichor is not yet publicly available to watch, you can see the trailer here. I hope that the film’s release and reception not only accelerate Louis-Jack and writer Kenneth Emson’s plans to develop a feature-length version, but also continue to amplify the discussion around depression in professional sports. No one may want to listen to or look at the Hurdy Gurdy Man, but his story needs to be told.
For more than two years leading up to its release, Break, the directorial debut from British actor Michael Elkin, has been summarily described as “Rocky with a snooker cue.”
That’s a bold pronouncement. The original Rocky, filmed in 1976, won Best Picture and Best Director, and earned its lead, Sylvester Stallone, a Best Actor nomination. The movie spawned five sequels, plus two spin-off Creed sequels. In total, the film series has grossed more than $1.7 billion dollars worldwide, an amount that will only grow if the anticipated Creed III and untitled Rocky ‘epilogue film’ become realities.
While the success and achievements of Rocky may be a tad out of reach for Break, the comparison does serve some purpose. Rocky captivated audiences by telling the story of Rocky Balboa, a small-time, washed out, boxer who is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove his worth, aided by the romantic love of a woman and the hard-knocks love of a gym trainer.
Similarly, in Break, Spencer Pryde (Sam Gittins), is an inner city London delinquent who wastes his life drug-dealing and committing petty crimes. He also happens to be a snooker prodigy, who could hit centuries by the age of thirteen. But, those skills, which might offer him a path out of his bleak existence, are squandered until the intervention of an absentee father (Luke Mably), a former professional snooker player (David Yip), and a budding romantic interest (Sophie Stevens). Collectively, they provide him with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a clean “break.”
As other reviewers have noted, this “tale of the underdog defying the odds” is well-worn on the silver screen – and not just in Rocky.[1]This Sporting Life and When Saturday Comes are better-known films that trace the evolution of a hot-tempered yobbo whose athletic prowess ultimately allows him to overcome social obstacles and inner demons.
In other words, Break is pretty clichéd, though that doesn’t mean it’s not an entertaining 107 minutes. The acting is solid and earnest; the script maintains its momentum to its formulaic culmination at the Beijing snooker championship; and it’s impossible not to enjoy Rutger Hauer, in his final role, owning his small amount of screen time as the local crime overlord.
It’s also hard not to appreciate the decade-long trek it took to bring Break to the silver screen or the gritty, entrepreneurial efforts to release the film in the middle of a pandemic. The filmmakers ultimately opted to showcase the movie this past July at the Brent Cross Drive-In Club in northwest London, breaking ground as the first film to premiere during the UK’s lockdown.
However, back to that troubling tagline…
Rocky is an incredible story, a heartfelt drama, a pugilist fable, a contrast in characters. And, it is also an exhilarating, emotionally wrenching boxing film. The movie loves boxing, and audiences, in turn, fell in love with boxing, from the famous training sequences to the knock-‘em-sock-‘em finale.
Even professional boxers love Rocky. Watching Rocky II with film critic Roger Ebert, Muhammad Ali declared, “A great movie…a big hit. It has all the ingredients. Love, violence, emotion. The excitement never dulled.” Commenting further on Rocky’s nemesis, Ali said, “Apollo Creed, the way he dances, the way he jabs, the way he talks…That’s me.”[2]
In comparison, Break never really shows any connection to snooker. The audience is asked to trust that Spencer is a snooker wunderkind, but we never see or feel this innate ability that resides under his anger. Qiang is his assigned trainer, but the relationship feels forced. It has none of the genuine emotion that made Burgess Meredith’s performance as Mickey so heartfelt in Rocky. Snooker really only becomes central to the movie in the final championship, and by then it’s too late.
In a 2018 interview with me, Elkin shared that he was aware that too little snooker and the film loses its authenticity and narrative thread; too much snooker and moviegoers will grow restless with the slow pace.
In an attempt to straddle that line, Elkin injects a number of authentic elements into Break, such as filming at the Crucible in Sheffield, home to the World Snooker Championship since 1977, and enabling cameos by some famous snooker players, including Liang Wenbo, Jack Lisowski, and Ken Doherty.
But, a famous venue and a couple blink-or-you’ll-miss-them cameos, does not make for a compelling snooker film. Break may be about Spencer with snooker cue, but for snooker fans, the wait continues until we get our Rocky.
That’s not to say the premise isn’t clever: Johnny “Snooker Man” Bonnar, the 17th-rated lookalike for the great world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, stumbles into an avocation in miniature snooker and pursues a path to challenge the reigning champion Wolfgang in the World Championship of Miniature Snooker (WCMS).
