Crying Fist

Colour, 35 mm
Korea, 2005, 135 min
Section: Another View
Oficiální stránky: www.showeast.co.kr/eng

Synopsis

A Korean boxing movie that sticks to the rules of the genre but applies them in a modern narrative way. After a rather hectic beginning, Crying Fist focuses on the parallel stories of its two protagonists. Forty-year-old Gang Tae-shik was a medallist at the 1990 Asian Games, but after his family life falls apart he makes a living on the streets allowing frustrated people to punch him as therapy. A young man named Yu Sang-hwan is a fairly capable and remorseless gangster. He eventually ends up in prison where he is more or less forced into learning how to box. Both men have gone quickly downhill, and both seek a way out of their predicaments through boxing and the approaching amateur championship....  This rough and tumble movie, featuring a number of bust-ups and brawls and long sequences of training and boxing matches, is rounded out by a melodramatic storyline: the two seemingly incompatible fighters are attached to their families: Tae-shik to his son and Sang-hwan to his seriously ill grandmother.

About the director

Ryoo Seung-wan (b. 1973, South Korea) made inroads into the domestic film scene with his successful independent debut Die Bad (Jukgeona hokeun nabbeugeona, 2000, screened at Karlovy Vary), which he realized two years after his short action comedy Dachimawa lee (1998). He soon became a leading representative of the new wave of Asian action films, in part inspired by the work of his American and British counterparts. He then shot a gritty action picture in which two men take on the underworld, No Blood No Tears (Pido nunmuldo eobshi, 2002), followed by a highly successful action comedy about a young and eager policeman, Arahan jangpung daejakjeon (2004). The boxing flick Crying Fist (2005) diverges from the work typical for his filmography, thematically and in terms of its critical reception: it took the FIPRESCI prize at this year’s Cannes IFF in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Ryoo Seung-wan writes the scripts for his films and sometimes acts in them. He also regularly casts his younger brother Ryoo Seung-beom.