The City of Violence (2006)

Plot: After a man is killed his four friends seek to find the perpetrators and punish them in their small town but find themselves dragged into a dodgy property deal run by out of town criminals that implicate one of their own.Expecting plot or dialogue from a martial arts film is usually a losing game. There is a plot here and it's easy enough to follow provided you are good at telling Korean faces apart but it's nothing you haven't seen done before. What you're here for is the fights and City of Violence provides them. Yes it is completely unrealistic. Yes the fights are nothing special in themselves. But they are well edited, feature enough visual flourishes to win you over and are laid to a decent score. The result is a picture that never quite grabs your heartstrings like it should but is a lot of fun anyway. If you've ever wanted to watch a goon and a cop fight break dancing martial artists whilst the town lights explode above them or to see a fight set to cheesy 1980s K-Pop then this is your film.

Perhaps more than any other genre in cinema, Asian martial arts movies are an acquired taste. It's not just that they have so many conventions and tropes you have to accept. It's that the better they are, the more their stories reflect the unique social and cultural aspects of their countries of origin, the less appealing they are to someone who just wants to watch people getting karate chopped. The City of Violence is a pretty good Asian martial arts movie. Whether you enjoy it depends on how much of a taste you've acquired for that sort of thing.Set in Korea, Taetsoo (Doo-hong Jung) is a police officer in Seoul who gets word that one of his boyhood friends is dead and returns to his hometown to look into it. Wangjae (Kil-Kang Ahn) was the toughest and boldest of the boys and grew into a leader of the gangs that have always run Taetsoo's hometown. Then he left the gang life behind when he married and settled down as a private citizen. He turned the control of his gangs over to another of the childhood chums, Pilho (Beom-su Lee), who's used his illicit power to bring a casino development to town. After Wangjae ends up dead in an alley, Taetsoo and another old friend, the hot-headed Seokhwan (Seung-wan Ryoo), investigate what happened. T he true story leads to Seokhwan's worthless brother Donghwan (Seokt-yong Jeong) and two of those martial arts fight scenes where two guys have to battle dozens of enemies at the same time.The fight scenes are always the most important element of this type of film and The City of Violence delivers. There's very little one-on-one action where it looks more like ballet than combat and there's none of that wire-fu stuff with superhuman leaps and feats of strength, but there's plenty of rough and bloody battle. It's very much in the style of Jackie Chan where there's lot of running and spinning and using whatever's handy for defense and attack. The guys playing Taetsoo and Seokhwan help the puncture the melodrama and keep things from getting too overwrought. As the challenges before them grow, they both evince a "you've got to be kidding me" weariness that gives some emotional realism to the physically fantastic action going on. The fight scenes also look really good, unlike many American action flicks where you literally can't tell what the heck is going on.The story of 4 old friends brought together by death and vengeance is fairly compelling and the acting seems good, though it's always hard to tell. Asian performances can have such different emotional pacing and inflection that it can be a little hard to follow. Beom-su Lee as Pilho, however, pulls off a seamless mixture of weakness and strength as a street kid grown up and out of his depth.Like most Asian martial arts films, there are plenty of things you have to go along with in The City of Violence…such as the kid gangs all having costume themes like something from the old Batman TV show and that this story apparently occurs in a reality where guns where never invented. But if you can accept all that, and you're not just looking for mindless violence, I think you'll like this movie.

A Seoul detective returns to his hometown to attend his childhood friend's funeral ceremony, remaining to seek out the one responsible for his death. The "City of Violence" is Onsung where Taewoo(Doo-hong Jung)returns to discover that childhood pal Pil-ho(Beom-su Lee), operating as President after taking over the reigns from slain Wang-jae(Kil-Kang Ahn) who allowed him to become the powerful leader due to his desire to get out of a life of crime, has become positively maniacal due to his position. Pil-ho was the kid of their gang often looked down on(..or so this is how he saw it as a child)by the rest and so being in charge has gone to his head. In fact, Pil-ho is borderline insane, and so drunk with his power that he has commissioned gangs throughout Onsung to do his bidding, and that includes giving Taewoo a hard time. Taewoo joins forces with fellow childhood chum, Sukhwon(Seung-wan Ryoo)to get revenge for their fallen comrade, watching as those that threaten Pil-ho's goals of securing a land contract for "Casinoland", a desired tourist attraction promising big monetary possibilities, die at his fanatical command. Taewoo and Sukhwon will go the extra mile, no matter the amount of men they'll have to obliterate, to get their hands on Pil-ho.Director Seung-wan Ryoo's City of Violence offers plenty of style and action choreography, with flashy camera work and bloody violence. Two phenomenal action set-pieces include Taesoo defending himself against four street gangs coming from all angles and the grand finale where Taesoo and Sukhwon must work their way through armies of thugs(..most equipped with machetes or ginsu knives)in order to achieve the ultimate goal of getting a hold of Pin-ho. I felt the film is about the deterioration of a group of friends thanks to jealousy and greed. Pin-ho's obsession of attaining the top of the hierarchy no matter the cost fuels the erupting graphic violence ending in tragedy. The filmmakers pull out all the stops and we see how our heroes tire of the endless stream of enemies they must dispose of in order to finish their quest of vengeance for the friend they lost by nefarious means. We see the depths of cruelty Pin-ho is willing to go in order to become a success. While straining credibility, the climax as the two skilled fighters engage their adversaries is exhilarating.

This movie sucked so-o-o-o-o bad. Forget that is was subtitled, the dialogue was worthless. Forget the plot, it was pretty convoluted. Forget the acting, the characters relied on their looks more than their skills. Forget tai kwon do, that martial art will get you no where in a real fight.Martial arts movies should be about quality, believable martial arts. The fight scenes were just horrible. The good guys could fight for extremely long periods of time against uncountable fresh rivals, do dramatic flips, complicated acrobatics, while bleeding from all extremities and never run out of energy to do more technical moves and leave their rivals in a heap--probably because they consumed their special stamina drink.The only positives about the movie were the sets. Glimpses of cool camera angles and good use of backdrops against character costumes. I need more story or more action in this type of film.