Jumeogi unda

I love Korean movies and have been a fight fan most of my life, so maybe I'm an easy mark here. Nevertheless, I believe this film is an outstanding study of two very opposite boxers. One a washed-up 43 year old Olympic Silver Medalist who gets beaten up for money on the streets, the other a teenage thug who ends up in juvenile detention after a mugging. The two stories don't cross until the final bout.

In the process, both evolve from being unpleasant jerks, who disrespect their families, to being... average. Characters, fighting, story-lines, etc. are very realistic. Thought you won't fall in love with either boxer, you'll probably wish both could win the big fight.

Movie may seem a bit slow and slightly long at 135 minutes but I think it's worth it so I recommend it highly, especially to fans of boxing and Korean film.

Like Rod Steiger's pained and enraged portrayal of Sol Nazerman in "The Pawnbroker," Choi Min-shik's performance in the 2003 film "Oldboy" is so indelibly stamped in my mind that I shall never forget it. So, I was understandably attracted to "Crying Fist" ("Jumeogi Unda"), knowing that he shared top billing in another presentation from the Hawaii International Film Festival. Choi's turn as a middle aged failure of a con man, whose only claim to fame is an amateur boxing title in his youth, again proves his power as an actor. The performance does not, however, pack the strength to overcome a sappy, melodramatic ending that ruins what might have been a more satisfying work.

Gang Tae-shik (Choi) is so pathetically down on his luck that he has taken to the world's most brutal form of street performance. For the equivalent of about $10, frustrated men, serial bullies and guys just looking to take out their aggression and anger on someone, can strap on a pair of gloves and pound away on Gang for one full minute. Gang will defend himself but not fight back. Labeled "the human punching bag," he lets women whale away on him for two minutes. He longs for a serious boxing comeback, a chance to regain his dignity and maybe win back his estranged wife and son.

Yoo Sang-hwan (Ryu Seung-beom) has acute anger management and drug abuse issues; he is regularly beating people up on the street and getting arrested. He gets introduced to boxing in a juvenile lock-up, where a tough old trainer convinces him that a boxing career might pull him out of the gutter of his life. He is years younger than Gang, but no less interesting or well-developed a character. Ryu, brother of Writer/Director Ryu Seung-wan, is highly effective in the role.

Inevitably, Gang and Yoo fight each other in an amateur match that could change each of their lives or accomplish nothing.

Interestingly, the characters never meet until their bout, so you have a film with parallel story lines and two protagonists, both underdogs. Who do you cheer for and why? Curious. (Actually, Korean boxing fans don't cheer, so the fight scenes are eerily and sometimes frighteningly quiet, with the only sounds coming from gloves striking human flesh, the grunts and groans of the fighters, and the admonitions of their trainers. Curious.) The fight scenes are not the best I've ever seen filmed, but they are very realistic and appropriate in the context of these boxers being amateurs. Choi and Ryu clearly took some serious hits during production. There are not a lot of pulled punches.

I found the third act unnecessarily melodramatic, but if you don't mind that kind of emotional string-pulling, you may find "Crying Fist" very much to your liking. But be warned, it is a brutal, bloody film, just as boxing is a brutal and bloody sport.

My main reason to seek this move out was to see Min-sik Choi, but I also shared an equal interest in what the director and his brother had to offer as well. I think we all had our share of boxing movies dealing with a man overcoming the obstacles and reaching his triumph in front of a massive crowd, with his face swelled up and bloody, looking for someone to share his happiness with. Then you had the bad guy conveniently set up in the opposite corner with redundant reactions and a task to come off as inhuman as possible throughout the film. This movie is no such travesty of epic proportions. It is so much more.

I don't want to dive too deeply into the plot, but in short the story deals with two men of different ages. Choi plays an Asian Games silver medalist whose health and family is in a downward spiral and Ryoo Seung-beom plays a careless young man with crime chasing tendencies and a small family that stands behind him no matter what.

With such premises set up both characters not only offer great acting, (notable Ryoo Seung-beom, who is barely recognizable) but they relentlessly take turns in shredding any hopes of achieving a better life or even surviving the one they already have. In certain cases their judgment is at fault and at other instances their luck just simply runs out. Ultimately the audience is left to cheer for these two characters, but since the film stands at over 2 hours it makes it pretty hard for you to somber over one guy more than the other.

Now the boxing itself is done pretty neatly, although for a silver medalist Choi's character had a rather amateurish fighting style, which could have been excused for number of reasons. Still it isn't even a complaint, as the boxing was booked sufficiently and to a minimum since the film's number one priority was to plunge you into the lives of these characters before the big showdown.

I guess it's safe to call this a "feel bad" movie, but one with an unorthodox resolution at last, which wasn't as much about guessing, but more about conjugating and accepting. In the end it was another great getaway cinematic experience from Korea, which I find very rewarding when knowing just where to look. Definite recommendation, Ryoo Seung-beom breathed a new life not only into his future career but made his past work seem more subtly meaningful than it actually was.

When i started watching this film i didn't have any expectations ... because i didn't have a clue what the film was about. So it could have been turned out pretty nasty; but luckily it did't! It was a really nice experience.

The first obvious thing i noticed was the professional work of the DP/director. This film is beautiful shot; lightning, camera etc. Sound and music were fine, but weren't very special but rather very solid. The second thing is the surprising good acting of the entire cast. There weren't any awkward moments. Everything felt very natural. And this is very important for the entire film because so much of the atmosphere depends on the performance of the lead protagonists. If they fail, the whole film might collapse.

A friend of mine said "crying fist" would be the Korean equivalent of Rocky. Well, i don't agree with this. The story of "crying fist" has much more content and value; discussing, for example, the issues and problems of people who lost their status in society is important and worthwhile. And, in this case, also very moving.

If you are interested don't hesitate! I really can recommend this one!

One of the great qualities about many Korean filmmakers is their ability to reinvent Hollywood genres. Drawing upon the intellectual and moral sensibilities of their own culture, they transform genres that in America traditionally consist of incredibly simple-minded narratives into something far more human, complex and literary. In the film "Crying Fist," it is the boxing movie genre that is wonderfully reinvented. Rather than presenting the audience with gratuitous action scenes involving a hero and a villain--as American audiences are so used to seeing--"Crying Fist" carefully and sympathetically develops the lives of both fighters. In the end, we are left with not only empathy for both fighters but a thoughtful drama that seeks to deepen our insight into the human condition.