Fist and Furious 난폭한 기록

Boring, bland and lacking in action as well as failing in story.

Director: Ha Won-Joon

Cast: Jung Doo-Hong, Ryu Deok, Hwan, Seo Eun-A, Jung Eui-Gap, Kim Hae-In, Choi Je-Heon

90 mins

Korean

I absolutely adore Jung Doo-Hong, he’s always been underrated and his work for the Korean film industry as an action coordinator is amazing. City of Violence, Arahan and Fighter in the Wind showed his impressive skills both in front and behind the camera. Hearing Fist and Furious I was eagerly anticipating its release.

Man was I disappointed, first and foremost the film is about the drama and not so much the action. It would have been all well and good if the drama and story were actually good. Sadly that’s not the case. Its lazy opening montage with a voice over that describes what has happened to our protagonist is so boring and feels like a tool to tell audiences rather than an actual part of its storytelling. For the setup we are introduced to a rookie cop, partnering with Jung, who has little character and immediately we are thrust with him being a father and loving husband. Surprise surprise he is killed off pretty much within 15 mins and there is no emotional attachment to his death despite the filmmakers attempt. Instead of focusing on Jung Doo-hong’s character he is saddled with an annoying tag along journalist who has such a predictable path. Further along pair are soon joined by a karaoke singer who is looking for her sister and she suspects the local gangsters have taken her for drug tests. Together they have to uncover the conspiracy and bring down the evil mob.

You have some very stupid moments laced throughout, take how on many occasions the protagonist can answer the phone but when someone needs to warn him he cannot hear his phone, then there’s a moment where a henchman's phone vibrates and he hears that just fine. Then there’s the overly predictable traitorous cop, the film makers might as well had a tag saying "I'm a traitor". Then you have our protagonist conveniently running into a colluding inn keeper of the villain. Add into the mix the main villain of the film whose just so bland and boring.

Camera movement is also very jittery and stiff at the same time. Cinematography is weak with a host of over exposure and questionable filtering at certain moments. A crane shot wobbles as it descends down. Awkward freeze frames and dissolves occur and the lack of wide shots at certain situations make it feel so weird as the characters just enter to a tight shot. Everything feels so amateurish.

Jung Doo-hong finally getting another shot as a star of a film and it should have been this amazing display of fighting set pieces. Shame then that fights feature so sparingly and are over pretty much as soon as things get going. The biggest problem many will have is the insane amount of edits featured in the fights theres like a cut in-between every 2 moves with matters made worse with how tightly framed everything is. Kicks are frequently on the edge of the screen and you won’t see the full extension of the kick, at times moves are blocked by the many stuntmen running around the screen and other times the more violent aspects are hidden behind somebody. If you try hard enough you can decipher the fights and what you get is some very hard hitting fight scenes similar to that found in City of Violence, but we shouldn’t have to work to see the fights. Jung Doo-hong and his team are impressive and theres a sense of power with there moves that Hollywood usually lacks.

Its saddening for me, I really want to support Jung Doo-hong and hope he gets more leading man roles but I can not recommend anyone to watch this. Its just so boring and at just about 2hrs long theres nothing to engage.