Film Review: Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest is a love letter to chasing high scores – Irish Examiner

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest (15A) is an offbeat documentary from Danish director Mads Hedegaard that follows Kim Kanoin (aka Cannon Arm) as he attempts to break the world record for playing the arcade video game Gyruss without a break.

The plan, which requires the help of all Kims arcade game-obsessed friends to work, is for Kim to play Gyruss for 100 hours a mind-boggling effort in prospect, although Kim has previously clocked up 47 hours straight. It all sounds like an exercise in Sisyphean futility: Kim is so good that he finds himself negotiating countless repetitions of a spaceship blasting enemies out of existence but the film is chock-a-block with fascinating characters.

Kim himself is a monosyllabic grandfather still sporting a 70s-style ponytail, and his friends are a diverse group whose specialisations poetry, engineering, Bach, quantum physics all play their part in Kims quest.

Its kinda like Rocky, observes one of the friends, alluding to Kims refusal to be beaten, and while its not remotely akin to anything like Rocky, Cannon Arm is still an absorbingly Quixotic story of enduring friendship.

(cinema release)

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Film Review: Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest is a love letter to chasing high scores - Irish Examiner