Let’s get ready to rumble! Song Kang-ho stars in Kim Ji-woon’s (The Quiet Family, A Tale of Two Sisters) hilarious comedy about wrestling…
Dao-ho (Song Kang-ho) dreams of escape from his mundane existence. His boring job as a bank clerk, unproductive, perpetually late and bullied into submission by his monster of a boss. An unrequited love for his work colleague, Miss Jo. Chased by street punks. Still living at home with his disparaging father. After being grappled by his boss in the toilets and held in a head lock, completely helpless, Dao-ho obsesses on how he could possibly have broken free. Even asking a martial arts friend, complete with neck brace, what he would have done. Then he stumbles across a run-down wrestling gym tries to join, living out a childhood dream.
Initially uninterested, the coach takes up Dao-ho when he offered a lucrative competition that needs a stool pigeon to take the fall. Particularly as this requires a real stinker of a cheat to make the headlining wrestler look good, a foul king. Slowly, painfully, Dao-ho trains with the coach’s daughter (Jang Jin-Young) and his two other rather pitiful wrestlers. Even after a successful first contest (despite a grisly fake/real fork mix up) he still seems a rather sorry affair. He might scare the living daylight s out of the local punks, but that doesn’t stop him embarrassing himself in front of his work colleagues at a karaoke evening, lamenting Miss Jo’s new choice of boyfriend. Worse of all he doesn’t even notice that the coach’s daughter is beginning to take a real shine to him.
When he discovers that his coach used to be his hero, Ultra Tiger Mask, Dao-ho decides that he is not happy to simply follow the choreographed script. Instead he dons Ultra Tiger’s old mask, and what begins as a spectacle quickly descends into a messy scrap were the contestants use chairs and even the round bell itself. But can Dao-ho finally defeat his boss? What do you think?
There are no easy answers in writer/director Kim Ji-woon’s work, no miracle overnight solutions. Dao-ho starts and ends an everyman, though perhaps with more confidence. This grounded quality pervades the film, a sense of reality that makes the outrageousness of the comedy all the funnier. Kim’s distant, almost Japanese style of photography allows it to come from the characters. Rather than slavishly follow each event, his allows it to unfold on and off screen. Despite the farcical nature of some of the humour, this is a film first – and beautiful at that. A style shared with other impressive Korean comedies like Barking Dogs Never Bite and to a lesser degree My Wife Is A Gangster.
Kim has a wonderful eye for the bizarre. Such as when Dao-ho disturbs punks busily beating someone up, one of them freezes in exactly the same position as the Football mural behind him. It’s declaration ‘Fighting! Korea!!’ taking on a whole different meaning when it’s protagonist is kicking something other than a ball. Or Dao-ho’s dream of being dressed as Elvis complete with jump suit in the ring, fighting his boss who grows vampiric fangs. It’s also an eye for the gruesome, as with the fork incident, that Kim has more recently exploited in the first segment of horror trilogy Three.
A world away from his first major role in action blockbuster Shiri, Song Kang-ho plays his role with impeccable comic timing, bringing both a Keaton-esque physicality and an amiable pathos. Dao-ho is a gonk, but a lovable gonk, never overplayed. And he has great support, not least Park Sang-myeon (My Wife Is A Gangster, Hi! Dharma!, Nowhere to Hide) as one of his fellow wrestlers.
Hilariously funny but also quite touching, this is one of the best comedies in years!
DVD details
Distributor: Spectrum (Korea)
Great transfer of the film packed with special features like directors commentary, cast information, production note, documentary and interviews. Unfortunately they're all in Korean.
Initial copies of this ran in a special numbered limited editon with which bizarrely came with an 'Ultra Tiger Mask' style shower cap. No longer available, the standard version has all the same features.
