Fighting Fish

And if you're not a martial arts fan, this is such a crappy movie, it should be a cult hit. The dialog is beyond cliché, the sets are visibly cheap, and the Chinese main character speaks English with a Dutch accent! So, when I saw it for the first time, I had a great time. And I've seen it several times after and it's still funny. Thank god the director took himself so seriously. The original screenplay was less than 60 pages, because time is filled with long martial art scenes. And the classic ones, so no wires. There were plans to re-release it as a cult film, but eventually they just released it on DVD. Too bad, because it would have been great as an audience participation flick. Even the producer would have wanted it that way. But there's still that director who thinks to highly of this huge Dutch flop.

Road map of Fighting Fish is very predictable. Content is razor thin and I suspects some copy work too. And the actor's performance can be compared with Arnold Schwarzenegger in this early years. Although the stif character of the A-Ken suits very well.

You have to watch this movie with a martial arts glasses. And when you do this, Fighting Fish is one of the top I have seen. It is not the spectacular kind of special effects a la Matrix. But more a slow and long shoot action style. There is of course show elements but the actions scenes are sublime. Especially the combination with the Asian drum like music make this movie a top in his kind.

This movie its story feels like a very lame excuse to bring some material arts fighting sequences to the big screen. You know how Star Wars fan films are always used as a lame excuse to do a lightsaber fight, well same goes for this movie, only it aren't lightsaber fights in this movie but its material arts instead. The movie really feels like a amateur movie at times.

All of the fight sequences were nicely choreographed, no doubt about that and its obvious that director Jamel Aattache has a passion for material arts movies but all of the fights in the movie felt simply pointless and they really came out of nowhere at times. It's good to watch as a material arts demonstration all but as a movie this movie is simply terrible. Because of this all the story never really flows well which makes the movie almost impossible to watch at times.

The story is extremely weak and simple and the romantic elements of the movie between Kim Ho Kim and Chantal Janzen simply don't work, because there is no chemistry between those two and their love seems very unlikely to happen.

The acting was also completely horrible. Kim Ho Kim doesn't have enough charisma as an actor for a role like this one. Chantal Janzen was simply terrible in her role and the person who decided to give Ron Smoorenburg so many lines should had also been fired. Ron Smoorenburg is a great material arts fighter but he simply isn't much good as an actor. It's also due to director Jamel Aattache that some of the acting was really lame at times, he simply isn't a very good actors-director.

The cinematography by Peter-Jan van der Burgh was good and gave the movie a very professional look at times. the city Rotterdam is a perfect background for movies, this one included. They really should make some more movies and series in this city. It's a great charismatic and atmospheric background for movies and series, not a great place to live in though.

Also the musical score by Yorick Goldewijk was very good and suited the movie perfectly.

But unfortunately some great cinematography and the good musical score aren't enough to conceal the movie its almost none-excising lame story. It makes "Fighting Fish" an absolutely horrible and pointless movie to watch. Probably the only ones who can still find some pleasure in this movie are persons who love material arts. It has some good material arts moments in it but as a movie this one is a complete failure that also suffers from a terrible amateur look at times.

3/10

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Well, let's see, this film has some nice fight scenes, very original indeed. The art direction makes for some great images, especially the scenes where Kim Ho Kim fights with the three bad guys after he accused them of killing his brother looks much like a real Hong Kong setting. The music is also very good, it's very original and of a high quality level.

As far as the story goes, it's predictable and nothing special really... the acting is not great, and some dialog is really bad... but Jennifer the Jong is not all that bad.. They better use the fighters from this movie in a production with a better script.

I got the DVD for a few euro's, and it contains a lot of bonus material, a making of and documentary, and the short feature "Buren" which is from the same director. I think Buren is a very nice short film, which also has nice art direction, and a good performance by Esmeé de la Bretonière. All in all a rather nice DVD.

A very enjoyable film overall, as it is very different from the ones we normally see in Dutch cinema.

In the Netherlands, it's very difficult to get a project off the ground that is different. That is why it is very brave that this young film maker has tried to make a different film, knowing that he would not be comforted by the very rude critics in this small, filmwise totally insignificant little country.

Hopefully he gets the chance to do something abroad, because the visual style and beautiful musical score of this effort give me reason to believe that this mr.Aattache has a good feeling for making a low budget film look nice. My friends and I were happy to see that the Fighting Fish DVD was also very informative: more than 114 minutes of Bonus material!

Lets hope this is the start of more action films from the Netherlands, much better than the utter crap they usually produce, like "Costa", "Feestje" or more recently, "Ellis in Glamourland".