The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Dir: Seth Gordon

2007

*****

Seth Gordon's The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters has absolutely everything you could ever want from a feature-length film. It's politics, it's religion, it's society, it's the human spirit and it's the history of cinema, all in one 79 minute long documentary that is essentially about a guy who plays an arcade game in his garage. Down on his luck and recently laid-off, Steve Wiebe decided one day to purchase an old Donkey Kong arcade machine to cheer himself up with and to play on when not working. Wiebes cuts an unfortunate figure of a man, a clearly intelligent and talented guy and would-be professional baseball player cut down in his prime by injury, unlucky in life and somewhat held-back due to suffering severe OCD. Donkey Kong offered unexpected hope to him in the form of a challenge and what would emerge as his ultimate ambition. Since 1981, the Twin Galaxies organisation has kept track of every high-score achieved on an arcade machine and Wiebes decided that he was going to be the new high-scoring record holder for Donkey Kong to become the ultimate, King of Kong. Enter one of cinema's greatest ever villains. Billy Mitchell is a legend in the world of classic arcades. He had held the record for Kong, Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede since the early eighties and is one of only a handful of people who had reached the mythical 'split-screen' level of Pac-Man, as well as reaching the games perfect score. Known for his cocky attitude, spectacular mullet hair-cut and shameless self-promotion, Mitchell (or 'The Sauce King' as he is also known as due to his special range of hot sauces) was the player to beat. This is when the film really takes off, Wiebes beats Mitchell's score of 874,300 with an amazing 1,006,600 points. However, after submitting video evidence of him doing this Mitchell sends one of his minions (self-styled protégé Brian Kuh) to investigate. It's like the Wicked Witch of the West sending out one of her flying monkeys out to complete his dastardly plan. The plot thickens when Kuh discovers that Wiebes arcade machine's circuit board was provided by Mitchell's arch-rival, fitness guru and pickup artist Roy Shildt. Mitchell reports Wiebes and Twin Galaxies denounce his high-score claiming that the evidence was of poor quality. When Wiebes then goes on to beat the high-score live to board members of Twin Galaxies, Mitchell submits a highly suspicious and 'poor quality' VHS tape that he had been saving for such an event, showing him beating both scores with a spectacular 1,047,200. It's so good you couldn't make it up. It's the classic tale of good vs. evil, the little guy taking on the big guy, a modern day (and rather nerdy) David and Goliath if you will. It's a geek epic, absolutely hilarious but never forced and one of the best documentaries of all time.