A story of redemption, of a dad proving to his kid that he really was a champion, plus a glimpse into China’s rally racing scene. Director Han Han’s 2019 smash hit ‘Pegasus’ is a family-friendly gearhead movie.
The protagonist Zhang Chi used to be a hot-shot. A factory-backed rally racer with 5 national championships and victories at the Bayanbulak Rally, the most important rally in China. Money, fame, women… he had it all! But he flew to close to the sun and through his own arrogance, lost it all.
While taking part in an illegal street race (in a Toyota AE86, of course) he gets busted by the cops. The factory team drops him, he loses his competition license, his driver’s license, and his honour.
After serving a 5 year driving suspension, Zhang is having a hard time even convincing his son little Zhang that he used to be something big. He’s yesterday’s newspaper, tossed in the waste bin of history. Abandoned by fans and sponsors, Zhang has scraped together a living by running a fried rice stand. But now that he’s paid the freight, Zhang wants to compete again and redeem himself.
He makes an application to the sanctioning body to have his competition license re-instated. Zhang comically squeezes his gut into his old racing suit to show up for the tribunal looking like a racer. To atone for his sins, Zhang must deal with the humiliation of returning to driving school, apologize to the teammates he brought down with him, and resurrect his old championship-winning race car.
Desperate for cash, Zhang goes on a TV game show and fails spectacularly. He turns to gangsters for financing, and luckily the Big Boss has a soft spot for Zhang. He agrees to pay for the race if Zhang will sing karaoke and dance provocatively for him, privately. Gosh….the things people will do to go racing!
The most interesting character in the film is the villain, Lin Zhengdong. He’s become the big dog while Zheng has been in purgatory. Lin is from a wealthy family and with the aid of the best and most expensive equipment, Lin too became a champion. But he cannot escape Zheng’s shadow, with many in the sport insisting that he could never have beaten old racing hero Zheng.
Lin does everything he can to get Zheng to the rally, so that he can publicly destroy him and cement his legacy as the greatest rally racer in China.
Director Han Han was a rally racer himself, and he called in all his favours to get the top rallyists in the country to be in his movie. If the first half of the flick is a comedy, the second half is an ESPN broadcast. Filmed with helicopters and remote cameras, the viewer is immersed in the beauty and danger of this driving discipline.
For 5 long years, Zheng has been racing the Bayanbulak Rally in his mind, closing his eyes and pretending to drive by using a dart board as his steering wheel. So, when his co-driver (and navigator) is injured just before the rally, and nobody is willing/able to help Zheng by jumping into the passenger’s seat to read off the critical pace notes, our hero if forced to face his fate alone… and through his redeeming journey to this moment, he is finally ready.
The ending is…nuts. It isn’t ‘Rocky Balboa‘ where just stepping in the ring is victory enough, and it isn’t a Hollywood happy ending either. Without completely giving it away, consider the name of the movie (and make sure to watch the post-credits scene). Let’s just say the movie is open to interpretation as to how does it actually end.
Isn’t it interesting how the hero’s downfall began when he drove a Toyota.