Crying Fist: Eyes Swollen With Blood and Tears

In your typical boxing movie, the glory of the big fight depends on the depth of your feelings for one of the contenders: You need to like one guy more than the other. It's the story of an underdog, or of a man seeking justice or demanding payback or earning respect. But Ryu Seung-wan's Crying Fist undermines all that. By building to a championship between rivals with equally tearjerking back stories, this unconventional sports flick leaves you uneasy about rooting for either opponent. Suddenly, both sides deserve your sympathy. Weird!

In one corner is Gang Tae-shik (Choi Min-sik), a former silver medalist who now, over 40, scrapes out a living by letting frustrated passersby beat him up in the street for a fee. Part performance artist, part washed-up local hero, he's a bit of a joke who, more seriously, is going blind from head traumas, even as his wife (Seo Hye-rin) is divorcing him, and his brother (Lim Won-hie) is fleecing him of every won.

In the other corner is Yoo Sang-hwan (Ryu Seung-beom), an emotionally retarded criminal with a devoted, doomed father and a dying, maybe demented, grandma. As sad stories go, he's Tae-shik's equal, especially when you consider that Tae-shik at least has an ongoing bromance with a cafe owner (Jeon Ho-jin) while all Sang-hwan's got is the mentorship of a prison boxing coach (Byeong Hie-bong), who admits all his boys-in-training are like sons to him. Sang-won is just his latest protege.

This all adds up to the climactic fight being discomforting instead of rousing since getting in either guy's corner means abandoning his foe. You almost wish, Ryoo hadn't let the parallel stories converge, that he'd ended with two fights in two weight classes, making each loss and/or victory more personal. Pitting them against each other seems illogical. And yet, it's also what makes this movie so uniquely strange and good.

While hardly a philosophical film, Crying Fist does raise questions beyond who should win... Like why is redemption by violence attractive? How can a natural inclination towards violence be transformed into something constructive? When does a focused application of violence become perverted? When, how and why does violence pay off? Does it ever? Which isn't to say Crying Fist is a cinematic essay on pugilism. It's an effective melodrama. You bring the crying, this movie will bring the fists.

Miss Staff Sergeant: Attention! Demotion! Diversion!

Don't go into Miss Staff Sergeant thinking you're going to see a laudatory biopic of Lee Yu-mi, the first female soldier to make it through combat training in Korea's marine corp. The movie is actually an improbably entertaining almost-insult, that's sort of unable to believe that a woman could succeed as an elite soldier without resorting to feminine wiles. Lee doesn't screw her way up the ranks but as a platoon leader who gets her promotion by colluding behind closed doors, she does get her troops to bond by giving them fancy cookies followed by a pep talk on the importance of team spirit. Played by junior-model-of-an-actress Lee Ah-lee, this bootcamp Gidget hits all her military postures as if they were dance moves and shouts out orders like a squad captain for cheerleaders. Because of this unflagging perkiness, Lee feels inappropriately ambitious. Is she aiming for a stripe on her uniform or a varsity letter? After her efforts towards greatness are sabotaged by a platoon leader (Lim Won-hie) comically obsessed with her ass, she fights her way back into the corp by demanding solitary confinement then running around with a backpack until someone takes her seriously.

And what does Lee get for all her camouflaged efforts? The privilege of singing a misogynist marching song while being surrounded by shirtless men; the honor of defending the reputation of a slimy back-stabber who's getting the promotion she deserves; and a sense of self-respect rooted in the fact that she didn't get discharged like her daddy once did. That might sound like awfully depressing stuff but in actuality, writer-director Jo Myeong-nam has an incredibly light touch and this chipper movie is so tongue-in-cheek about sexism that you'll likely find yourself succumbing to the feel-good aspects of his underdog story. It's a tough cookie who won't route for Ms. Lee — both the actress and the real life woman she plays — as she overcomes each obstacle in her way. When the lady-in-uniform picks up a surrogate father in Sergeant First Class Kang Cheol-in (Son Byung-ho), you realize anyway, this isn't about the real struggles that accompany breaking through the military industrial complex's glass ceiling. It's a silly, sentimental, sweet-natured story inspired by a real trooper who deserves more than a little respect.

This Is Law: Some Days, Blood Red Can Be a Pretty Color

The beginning of This Is Law moves at such a clip, that you fear the movie's murderer is going to go through an entire Tarot deck since he's leaving bloodied cards at each and every one of his kills. But is he even one killer? And when he stops leaving cards, what does that signify? Whoever is doing it and for whatever reason, Homicide Detective Bong (Lim Won-hie) is out to find out before his rival Pyo (Kim Min-jong) from the Special Task Force does. While he's at it, Bong's going to win the affections of his competing officer's partner Kang (Shin Eun-kyung), too. Where's there's time for crime, there's time for romance, I say. Predictable? On paper, yes. But running a sprawling two-and-a-half hours with random quick edits, evaporating subplots, and periodic misdirects that sometimes inexplicably entertain, you'll probably forget which way Min Byeong-jin's crime pic is inevitably headed. Then once you finally get there, you'll be doing double-takes at your television. Really? Is this how it all wraps up? Flashy without being the least bit artful, This Is Law is a souvenir of Korean cinema. It's shiny and made from the basest materials and like most trinkets, it's perfectly harmless. Watch it. Discard it. Pass on to a friend.

Le Grand Chef: Cooking Up Something Special

Is there a dependable recipe for making a comedy? Le Grand Chef will have you thinking so. Director Jeon Yun-su's feel-good hit sticks to a tried-and-true formula that's served everyone from Frank Capra to Ron Howard. And it's so simple! Gather together some beloved types: the loyal grandson (Kim Kang-woo), a saucy ingenue (Lee Ha-na), the amoral rival (Lim Won-hie) dating back to childhood. Toss them into an equally classic story about a working class Joe who must compete with a citified poseur for the title of greatest chef. Spice it up with wacky subplots involving a charcoal-maker on death row, a cow that cries, the death of a one-armed royal chef, and the search for the perfect Ramen. Stir. Serve warm...and fuzzy. Since this is a Korean romantic comedy, there's no shortage of sugary moments. By the same token, there are episodes of outright violence as well as slapstick. (The uninterrupted gutting and skinning of a live blowfish is shown not once but twice up close.) Throughout, cooking is presented via split screens as if it were the national sport of Korea. Maybe it is. Who wouldn't vote for BBQ over Tae Kwon Do? Only fools who don't find Le Grand Chef deletectable.

Three... Extremes: A Cut Above

It recently dawned on me that Korea is the Ireland of Asia. As major influences go, it's got China and Japan to Ireland's U.S. and England. Plus, it's got a similar North-South, politically polarized split with the Southern part being the more celebratory half. (Are Protestants the Communists of Europe?) It wasn't politics that triggered this realization however. It was art. For just as the Emerald Isle, despite its diminutive size, smaller population, weaker role in the world, troubled history, etc., can go head-to-head with either America or Britain in terms of literature (Shaw, Wilde, Joyce, Swift), Korea can do the same with its big brothers in terms of film. Take a look at the movie Three... Extremes, a trilogy of horror flicks from Hong Kong ("Dumplings"), Korea ("Cut"), and Japan ("Box"). This triptych could easily serve as an argument for Korean moviemaking supremacy. Admittedly, Fruit Chan and Takashi Mike aren't their respective countries Wong Kar-wai or Kurosawa (whereas Park Chan-wook is his country's Park Chan-wook). But even so, when it comes to working within the horror genre, neither Hong Kong nor Tokyo comes close to Seoul's succubus of a film. In comparison to Park's Shavian tale of a film-extra hell-bent on leveling the playing field for heaven, Chan's Swiftian parable about a woman willing to eat fetuses to regain youth and Mike's not-too-wild dream of a Siamese twin look plain silly. Throw in a fantastic performance from Lim Won-hie as the crazy who can dance as well as he wields an axe, and you've got the makings of thriller that's not only visually stunning but highly entertaining as well.