Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin recently was awarded a higher grade of belt in Judo than Chuck Norris ever achieved in his life. This is not to say that either man is the best in the world, but just that Putin exceeded the man who is the focus of running jokes about how amazingly manly he is. This achievement only adds to the image that Putin has crafted for himself – the bare-chested hunter, the man who guides birds to safety high above the ground and so on. It was hearing this news recently that brought it to my attention that this film exists – a film whose title is really the only invitation you need to immediately be interested. As a suggestion "let's learn judo with Putin" is really only ever only to be followed by "yes, let's do that, let's do that right now" and this is how it was that I decided I really wanted to see this film.

The sense of disappointment is almost immediate. We open with Putin sitting in a small studio introducing the activity to the viewer, or at least this is what I assume he is doing as I could not find this film with subtitles. After a few minutes of this, we are introduced (via clips) to some Russian Olympic athletes within the sport and from here on it is them that do the demonstrates while a typically joyless narrator walks us through them. In terms of seeing ad understanding the moves the film is actually pretty decent – each move gets shown in stages, at various speeds and various angles so it is easy to understand what the body did, where the force was and where the force came from. I shan't pretend I sat through all 80 minutes of it but flicking through some of the moves I quite liked the detail it went into. However none of this can help overcome the sense of disappointment in finding that the real title of the film should be "Let's learn Judo with an introduction from Vladimir Putin".

I guess this is just a marketing thing that achieved two goals – first in fairness it does give publicity to the sport to have it talked about due to the DVD, and I suppose this is public reason that Putin did it. The second reason is that it adds to the image of his manliness to have him front such a DVD, even if the only move we see him do is sit still in a small room while having that stoic and slightly menacing look on his face. I came to the film keen to see the man in action as I am not aware of any other world leader who has released an instructional sports video, but ultimately was disappointed even if the presentation of some of the moves was interesting and well done.