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Byung-tae (Lee Hyun-kyoon) is constantly bullied at his school, to a
point where he can't take it no more ... but quite simply put, he is crap
at defending himself, and when he follows someone else's advice, he's
worse off most of the time than if he had done nothing at all.
Then though, he - living in a boarding house since his cop-father has
as good as no time for him - meets his next-door neighbour Pan-su (Baek
Yun-shik), who seems to be able to wrestle any man down with only the
slightest of efforts - and somehow he manages to persuade Pan-su the
art of fighting, even if Pan-su is more than reluctant at first. For
the longest time though, Byung-tae doesn't seem to be improving at all,
and every time he gets into a fight, he seems to be humiliated even more
than the last time, basically because he lacks the killer instinct he
needs to throw a good punch.
It's almost end of the term, when Byung-tae's best friend Jae-hoon gets
into a fight with the school's head bullies ... and is killed. Now it
seems, Byung-tae has finally found his true fighting spirit, and he faces
each of Jae-hoon's killers in one-on-one combat and defeats them,
culminating in a public fight against the bullies' leader Paco, who is not
only defeated but also publicly humiliated.
Victory ... or is it ?
Of course not, because Paco has ties with local gangsters and organizes
a small gang to have his revenge on Byung-tae, whom they soon want to beat
to a pulp and then stab to death ...
Pan-su, a wanted criminal, meanwhile wants to leave the country, but
when he sees the gangsters closing in on Byung-tae, he decides otherwise
and defeats the gangsters almost single-handedly ... even if that means he
is hit over the head with a baseball bat, stabbed in the back with a
knife, and finally surrounded and shot by the police (and Byung-tae's
father no less), who think he is threatening Byung-tae.
However, none of this has killed Pan-su, and in order to furnish the
film with a happy ending, he manages to make an escape from the hospital
wehre he is treated for his multiple injuries right after surgery ...
This film is not nearly as bad as it may sound, it is in no way the
Korean Karate Kid or something, actually it rather approaches the
subject tongue-in-cheek, with all of Byung-tae's defeats, as brutal as
they might be, also being wickedly funny. That's not to say Art of
Fighting is a great film though, its narrative lacks excitement for
the most part and its climax is so full of clichés its nothing short of
cheesy and damages the overall impact of the film.
Rather so-so than anything else, definitely nothing to write home about
...
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