<SPOILERS>
The structure of this film reminds me of The Prestige, it works on multiple levels, and clearly some people don't make it past the first.
There are clues throughout the film, that distract your mind off what is really happening:
Clearly Elliot is full of *beep* from the start, his martial arts stance, the way he carries himself, kicks, are not those of someone who is much cop at kickboxing, let alone a champion. This is pretty obvious.
However, there are also jokes that display the comedy that the film really is:
You don't expend so much energy in making a film, and use a £100 digital camera to shoot it. The tripod looked pretty good, making the camera on top an amusing contrast :)
A 1/5 Japanese - heh, jokes hidden in plane sight.
The jumping out the window gag. Runs around and jumps out again. Like a Warner Bros cartoon of old.
Elliot ends up in Outer Mongolia - that is some 1970's kungfu flick ending right there :)
Perhaps the most obvious fakery are the excessive multiple camera angles and setups, not something you would expect from a unstaged documentary. It is unfortunate that this aspect was flawed, because the general acting is very believable. So more restrained editing could have helped this.
To the directors (and writers!) credit, they seem to be maintaining the pretence in interviews, and according to another poster on here also on the DVD commentary.
I watched this with my brother, and the bouncing back and forth of ideas probably helped clarify it in my mind, after 30 mins it was pretty clear what we were watching.
So, good fun, and a decent exercise in critical thinking.
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