And now on with the show! This week's movie is Fighter in the Wind, a South Korean martial arts movie. I recently gave a lecture on Japanese martial arts and have experienced first hand how difficult it can be to describe the feeling a martial artist gets when watching a movie like this but I can tell you that its different from the layman's experience. A bit of historical background first. The story revolves around the man Choi Bae-dal, based on the Korean martial artist Choi Yeong-eui, who later took the Japanese name Masutatsu Oyama. Yes, it's a bit confusing. The real man Choi was a Korean who joined the Japanese military to become an aviator and was assigned to a kamikaze unit. After the war he had a difficult time settling down in Tokyo due to the racism against Koreans at the time. However he persevered and started attending university. He studied martial arts at various karate dojos around Tokyo for several years and achieved the rank of 8th dan. For all of you who don't understand what that means, in Japan 3rd dan generally allows one to teach a martial art, and 5th dan certifies the practitioner as a master. After several exploits, including beating up several US MPs, he retreated to the mountains to practice with a student who left him due to the solitude. Choi stayed in the wilderness alone for another 14 months training his mind and body. When he returned to civilization he dominated the Karate division of the Japanese National Martial Arts Tournament. He then went on to create his own style of Karate. He is well known for inventing the 100 man kumite (which the guy finished 3 times in 3 days!) and fighting bulls bear handed. This man was truly a great martial artist and demands the respect of any martial arts practitioner.
Well! That was a lengthy introduction. My point is this guy is amazing and worked hard all his life to perfect his art and share it with others. Accompanied with his almost mythical exploits it no wonder there have been several movies made about the man and Fighter in the Wind is just the most recent. For those who aren't familiar with martial arts movies there has been a serious shift in the genera in recent years. For years Jackie Chan had a corner on the international market for martial arts films but as soon as The Tuxedo came out his career has been plummeting. This is mostly due to studios not allowing him to do his own stunts anymore in favor of absolutely ridiculous special effects. His name recognition also led him to mainly feature in children's movies which left a gaping void in the martial arts film industry. This has been the greatest thing ever for fans... Everyone and their mother has been trying to become the next international superstar and it has led to some of the best fight choreography ever as well as bringing new talent to the forefront. Along with the change in tone in martial arts movies to boost the attention to new actors, there has also been a shift towards nationalistic films. This was probably popularized by the Chinese film Hero staring Jet Li. This film was based in the warring states period right before king Qin Shi Huang becomes the first emperor. Since then films such as Ong Bak, The Protector, and Merantau have featured heavily nationalistic themes as well as supporting native agricultural societies over international industrialization. There is also the trend of loosely based historical martial arts films like Ip Man. Fighter in the Wind falls into both categories. FYI, its not very historically accurate.
The movie starts out with Choi joining the military to fly planes, him and several of his Korean buddies are then inexplicably being punished by being left tied to posts for...not wanting to be kamikaze pilots...or something. During an American bombing run they are freed by a Japanese officer who only releases them because he is to insulted that dirty Koreans are let into the great kamikaze unit. And so the great racism spectacle begins. True, Koreans underwent a lot in Japan and still do today, but its almost comical how everyone gets in Choi's way. Oh by the way, did I mention he has no fighting skill and regularly gets his ass kicked by Japanese. So they set up very early that the Japanese are awful people, accept Choi's girlfriend. As he learns martial arts slowly from his families old servant, he moonlights as a superhero beating up American GIs who prey on Japanese girls making him the most wanted man in Tokyo. About half way through we return to the main plot of his rivalry with the Japanese martial arts expert who freed him at the beginning. Events basically play out according to the historical account accept that he is represented as a uneducated day laborer who's only motivations are revenge and national pride. This is completely contrary to Choi Yeong-eui's political positions as he integrated into Japanese society, but as this is a Korean movie, they really want to portray this amazing Korean as pro-Korea as possible. Old wounds run deep.
Only after watching the movie did I look up Choi Yeong-eui and learn about his life. Many parts of the movie get things blatantly wrong, he beat up some MPs, but he said it was because he was angry about losing his friends in the war, he wasn't very pro-Korea, he not only had a university background, but also studied at several Japanese dojos. He did not leave Tokyo because he was afraid of fighting, and his second tour in the mountains wasn't because he killed a man. The film makers have done something I find very annoying and that is change the character's motivations. Over and over they refer to Choi as Musashi the great samurai who crushed all of his opponents until he died at 61. Musashi was always striving to be the best and from the historical accounts I would say anyone who fights bulls is following a similar goal, or trying to kill himself, one or the other. In this respect I think the movie probably captured Choi's obsession with martial arts, however it is so interspersed with his made up motivations it almost masks his motivation all together. This is a problem when making martial artists the good guys, you have to give them a good and heroic reason to beat the crap out of people on a daily basis. In the martial arts world personal achievement is good enough but to the rest of the world it looks like sadistic bullying, so you have to make your character very clearly good and have a clearly evil rival. Choi's rival in this movie, Kato Masaya, the president of the Japanese martial arts federation, is very poor in this respect. His fighting isn't impressive and he only beats Choi in the beginning because Choi knows no martial arts at that point. Later he stands around looking ominous and representing everything that was bad about Japan from the era of occupation. He sends out assassins and constantly torments Choi almost killing his best friend at one point. This creates a strange paradox at the end when they finally square off. Choi beats him duel style with a stopped punch to the face and Kato forfeits. Choi walks off slowmo style. No retaliation, no stab in the back, nothing. Kato has been trying to have Choi killed the entire movie, they are alone in a huge expanse of tall grass, he has a sword, no one would find the body... I understand he is supposed to be in awe of Choi's power but really they filmmakers work themselves into a corner with these characters.
One of the most surprising things about this movie is that the main actor Yang Dong-geun is not a martial artist. From what I can tell he is acting through the whole movie with no outside experience. He does have incredible coordination and beautiful movements probably from his break-dancing career. Unlike actors like Bruce Lee and Iko Uwais who were actual martial artists who competed professionally in tournaments Yang Dong-geun is performing his role a la Jean Claude Van Dam (he's a ballet dancer, not a martial artist). On a similar note, Tony Jaa's Ong Bak 3, his personal "look at how awesome I am" movie, was all about dance and how it relates to martial arts. Yang Dong-geun has done no other martial arts movies however after he finishes his required military service he may return to us.
This movie suffers from two main problems. The over arching theme of racism and the pure innocents of the Korean people in all matters is a bit ridiculous as is the near deification of Choi Bae-dal. The characters for the most part come off as stereotypes. The other problem is with the flow of the movie. Several of the storylines they begin just end with no conclusion. I understand that this may happen when making a historical movie, but with everything they changed I find it hard to believe that they didn't want to tell us what happened to the Japanese gangsters or the rest of the Korean circus performers or his outstanding warrants for attacking so many Americans. Surely at one point a half clever policeman would have noticed the famous martial artist's picture in the paper and noticed an odd resemblance to the wanted poster on the wall. Also it bounces from times and places with minimal labels as to the setting. I've seen some movies like Tora! Tora! Tora! where the captions make sense but after a while they get a little annoying to the non-history buff. This has the opposite effect and jumps from Korea to Japan easily enough but then we just accept several of the settings and awkwardly juxtaposed scenes.
Now I understand I have been a little harsh on the film making but I want to stress that this is a very entertaining film. There are several goals a film can have and this one seems to have had a few. The failed or more ridiculous goals were the historical portrayal of Choi Yeong-eui and a Korean nationalist theme. The film succeeded overwhelmingly at having great fight sequences. Fight choreographer Doo-hong Jung has an impressive filmography of action director rolls, most recently with Mongol. These fight scenes will make you cringe as you watch Choi inflict horrible injuries on hordes of Japanese with his bare hands including fighting a sword wielding man in a duel to the death. Typically in movies like this the action is severely broken up by plot based scenes, however in this movie, once Choi learns martial arts it is almost non-stop action or building tension up to the next fight.
I highly recommend Fighter in the Wind to any martial arts fans. Probably won't hold any interest to non-fans of the genera, but the main cast give relatively convincing performances which is refreshing. Not as good as a straight up drama but pretty good. I only hope Choi Yeong-eui can contain his zombie rage at the historical inaccuracy of this movie.
Movies Referenced:
2011-Rango
2010-Ong Bak 3
2009-Merantau
2008-Ip Man
2007-Mongol
2005-The Protector
2004-Fighter in the Wind
2003-Ong Bak
2002-Hero
2002-The Tuxedo
1970-Tora! Tora! Tora!
