Jumeogi unda

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!

Another day, another Corean film, but another good one. This one is a boxing movie. But it's not really a boxing movie in the sense that Rocky is a boxing movie. It's rather a drama foremost, about down-and-out losers and their sad pathetic lives, and then a boxing movie: boxing being the means by which they can lift themselves out of their conditions.

The two characters are quite different in some sense, one being a former silver medal winning Asian Games champion with no job and on the brink of losing his marriage and family and the other being a troubled street youth with a compassionate family. At some point, both characters lose out and find their hope in boxing, whether on the streets as a human sandbag or in the prison gym. And then a greater hope is found.

Of course, unlike a typical boxing movie, you have two protagonists and when their paths cross, you don't know who to root for. Both are sad sacks and hard to love people, but have enough humanity still in them that you can't help but wish for them to make it in the end. But... the movie brings up the strange conflict of... who? All the same, that sort of conflict is fairly realistic in any one vs. one story when you think about it. There's hardly a truly villainous villain like the villain of Rocky IV.

The film is shot in two different styles, for each characters stories, although they're tied together well by overarching style elements and the characters are fairly well developed and superbly acted. I will admit that the younger character's story is a little incredulous sometimes and a small bit contrived for extra sympathy, but the movie is generally so watchable overall that I was able to ignore it. With mostly solid writing, great acting, excellent direction and high production value, I'd have to say that Crying Fist has turned out to be one of my favorite boxing films and possibly even sports film. Which isn't to say it's one of my favorite films.

Some of the contrivances are still glaring, and it's hard to fully ignore, but all the same, this is a solid effort and a film that I could recommend highly. Good stuff! 8/10.

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.

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.

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.