2000, South Korea. Starring Song Kang-ho, Chang Jin-young Park, Sang-myeon, Cheong Wung-in, Song Young-chang, Chang Hang-seon, Lee Won-jong, Kim Su-ro. Directed by Kim Ji-wun.

More and more, it's looking like Korea is where the action is. While the United States continues to pump out wildly overblown, obnoxious blockbusters that are hardly worth mentioning (and don't even bother with telling me how they are "visually stunning"), and Hong Kong continues to counter every good film with a dozen nightmarishly awful ones, Korea has been quietly building a steadily growing international cult following by giving us intense horror and action films that boast the polish of a big budget film but don't skimp on plots, characters, writing, and other things deemed completely unimportant in this day and age of the never ending parade of shallow, slapdash crap that gets by on being "a feast for the eyes." In Korea, they seem to realize that you can kick some serious stylistic ass while not forgoing quality writing and dramatic punch.

Movies like Shiri, Nowhere to Hide, and Joint Security Area have blown all other recent action films out of the water while twisted Korean horror films like Memento Mori and Tell Me Something do as much to revitalize the anemic horror film market (unless Valentine was your idea of quality horror) as the aforementioned action films did for their own genres. And then you have action-comedies like Attack the Gas Station that strike a perfect balance between thrills and laughs.

Throughout the world, Korean films are making waves, and the attention is very much deserved. Korea has one of the only domestic film markets that isn't completely dominated by American movies, where the domestic fare can actually nab the number one spot. When I was in Japan recently, there were only two Asian films playing amid an onslaught of big budget American crap -- the Japanese anime feature Metropolis and the Korean blockbuster Joint Security Area. Throughout Europe, Korean films are consistently garnering critical praise and awards.

And America, as usual, completely missed the boat. Just as this country caught on to Jackie Chan after every single country in the world already considered him old news, just as we started digging the Hong Kong new wave years after the tide went out, so too are we dragging our feet on catching onto the fact that the Koreans are kicking some serious cinematic ass right now. I guess the lack of attention to plots and logic in deference to advancing the technology of film presentation has paid off. Our Dolby 5.1 DSS home theaters cranked to eleven insure than we'll hear nothing but the mindless blather of the latest Michael Bay abomination. There's a reason that you can find more people reviewing the quality of a DVD than the quality of the film on the DVD.

Well, ya get what you deserve, and frankly, I'm never one to mourn the ignorance of the masses. It's their loss, and as long as countries like Hong Kong continue to bring cheap Korean film DVDs to me, I don't really need my own country getting involved. After all, we'd only edit out half the material, dub it, and replace the original score with a compilation of P. Diddy and Linkin Park songs. The less said about how we treat most Hong Kong films, the better.

The Foul King was box-office champ in Korea, and it's a great example of what's making these films so popular with everyone except the people who thought American Pie II was funniest shit they'd ever seen. Song Kang-ho stars as Dae-ho, a stressed-out loan officer who is plagued by two problems at work. First, he's one of the two worst employees in the whole bank. Second, his boss is an abusive, overbearing ass who likes to prove his points about the cutthroat nature of life by sneaking up on Dae-ho and slapping on a vicious headlock.

But our beleaguered hero's woes don't end there. The teenage thugs who hang out on his route back home enjoy beating him up and chasing him. His father constantly harasses him about being such a twit, and the co-worker upon whom he has a crush doesn't even realize he's alive, despite the fact he sits only a chair or two down from her. His only solace from the many trials of life comes in the form of watching professional wrestling.

Hoping to find a way of breaking his boss' headlock, Dae-ho seeks the advice of a tae kwan do expert, but the best the guy can do is brag about how a true master of tae kwan do would never get in such a predicament, but if he did, he'd just deliver a series of sweeping or over-the-head kicks to free himself. Dae-ho, of course, finds this advice of little help, especially since the master himself is incapable of actually performing any of these kicks.

When Dae-ho is thrown out of a meeting for trying to sneak in late, he wanders the streets and ends up outside a run-down gymnasium advertising that it will train professional wrestlers. Dae-ho is interested but too chicken to go in at first. Eventually, he works up the courage, or is at least overwhelming frustrated by his boss' headlocks, and he enters. The gym isn't much to look at, and neither are the only two students, both out of shape and about as graceful as two stoned orangutans attempting to perform an interpretational dance that captures the spirit of an exploding building. Only slightly more impressive is the gym's owner and primary coach, a down on his luck, out of shape has-been who, in his day, had been one of the most popular cheating heel wrestlers of all time, Ultra Tiger Mask. Age and bad financial decisions have not been kind to him, however, and he spends his days now slurping instant ramen and drinking cheap beer in the back of the gym.

Dae-ho, however, is undaunted by the ghetto nature of the gym, and begs the coach to take him on as a student, or at least teach him how to get out of a headlock. If he can just learn that, then he'll be able to best his boss, and surely things will turn around for him. The coach, however, is less than impressed with the clumsy, somewhat doughy young man and tells him to get lost. Dae-ho is heart-broken, but he's also undeterred.

When the coach gets a visit from a big-time promoter on the Korean pro wrestling circuit, things change. The big-time guy represents the hottest young prospect in Korea, Yubiho, who is looking to make a name for himself by breaking into the international big leagues via the Japanese pro wrestling scene. What Yubiho needs for an upcoming match is a good heel to play off of, a dastardly wrestler who specializes in cheating. The promoter gives the coach the script for the match and tell shim he better come up with someone. Knowing that his two current students, Taebaik and Odai are about as useful as a couple sacks of potatoes in the ring, he decided to give Dae-ho a try.

Unfortunately, Dae-ho isn't exactly an in-ring wonder, and they have little time to give him any formal training. The coach's drop-dead cute daughter, Min-young, is his principal teacher, which Dae-ho is skeptical of until she throws him to the ground and slaps an excruciating armbar on him. She does the best she can with him, and slowly but surely everyone realizes that Dae-ho's not half bad once he gets the hang of things, especially since his primary function will be to stumble around, cower, and cheat.

He makes his in-ring debut at a lo-fi indy event against one of the other students, and things go well up until the point Dae-ho, who is given the ring persona of The Foul King, accidentally grabs a real fork instead of the painted wooden prop fork he's supposed to use. He plunges the fork into his opponent's forehead, which promptly erupts in a shockingly gory spray of blood. The film shows that it was written by someone who was a wrestling fan, or at least knew enough about wrestling to site Abdullah the Butcher as the undisputed master of using forks in the ring.

All this is well and good, but Dae-ho is still unable to escape his boss' headlock, and he's still unable to attract the attention of his co-worker. He's also too much of a dolt to recognize the fact that his dream girl is Min-young. And yeah, his dad still picks on him. When Dae-ho discovers the coach's old Ultra Tiger Mask mask, he decides to adopt it as his own. Hoping that it will help him find the same courage outside the ring that he has inside, he dons the mask and hits the streets. His first stop is to soundly kick the asses of the young punks who picked on him earlier. Subsequent efforts to talk to his father while wearing the mask and to his co-worker Miss Jin don't go as well, as both people think he's crazy or drunk.

Complicating things is the fact that Dae-ho realizes that he's actually talented enough in the ring to be more than a cheating comedy wrestler. If he was given the chance to prove himself, he could really shine. His chance comes the night of his match against Yubiho, a lean, muscular high flyer. It's The Foul King's first match beyond the county fair indy circuit, and even though Yubiho wants to stick to a well-plotted script for the match, Dae-ho is determined to turn it into something more than a showcase for his opponent.

What's most striking about this film is that it is very conventional while at the same time being very subversive in how it handles the conventions. There are plenty of cliches here -- the young hero who is so blinded by his crush on an unobtainable and ultimately shallow woman that he fails to see the dream girl right under his nose, the washed up coach with one last shot at training someone for glory, the big final match. A brief description of The Foul King makes it sound very conventional indeed. But it's how it handles the conventions that really sets it apart. The film never really gives you the convenience of a nicely wrapped up closure of events. In the end, Dae-ho and Min-young still have not hooked up. His final match, while spectacular, goes the way of Rocky for him. And his final confrontation with his boss, while hilarious, is not exactly what Dae-ho was hoping for. In this way, the film manages to rise above conventions and deliver something fresh and consistently funny. You know what is supposed to happen in this sort of film, but you never know if what is supposed to happen is what will actually happen.

The characters are wonderful, as are the actors who play them. Song Kang-ho is impossible not to like and root for as the goofball loser Dae-ho, especially since he rarely gets what he wants. The supporting characters are well developed, with the abusive boss being the best. He's just over-the-top enough so that you really despise him, but he's not so cartoonish that he becomes simply laughable. He's just a dick, plain and simple, and a very believable one at that, which makes you cheer for Dae-ho all the harder. Min-young and the rest of the down-and-out indy wrestlers are great as well.

The movie is a perfect blend of romance, action, and comedy, with all three ingredients well prepared. This is one of the only slapstick films I've seen where slapstick comic violence results in very lifelike bloodshed. It's like watching an episode of the Three Stooges where Shemp would get stuck in the head with a fork, and instead of just yelling "Oww!" a splattering of blood would gush from the wound as he passed out and had to be hauled to the back. It's just another way the film manages to shock you by giving you something very run-of-the-mill but presenting it in a way that catches you completely off-guard.

Most of the action is, of course, in the ring. For the most part,t he wrestling is humorously bad, just as it is supposed to be. Odai and Taebaik look like every out of shape wrestler on the indy circuit who can't even be has-beens because there never were nor will be in the first place. Unlike American movies that focus on the world of professional wrestling, The Foul King is very accurate in its portrayal of the seedy, harsh, and often destitute lives most wrestlers endure. While certainly focusing on the comedic aspects of such a life, it never fails to treat the dedication of wrestlers and the wrestling business with anything but respect, which is a breath of fresh air. Wrestling in Korea is more like it is in Japan -- ie, far less antics and skits and far more technical wrestling -- but certain aspects of the indy circuit are the same no matter where you go.

The movie also treats the wrestling (and cinema) fans with respect. Despite the fact that even the lowliest country yokel (who I think might be me, actually) recognizes that wrestling is a scripted event (which is something different that being "fake," but I'm not really in the mood for that debate at the moment), the few American movies made regarding the subject still maintain kayfabe -- the illusion that pro wrestling is real, that the outcomes of matches are not predetermined. The Foul King acknowledges the fact that we're not complete dolts, and that exposing the fact that wrestling is scripted is hardly a shocking revelation.

At the same time, it deftly deals with the fact that being scripted and being trained doesn't mean the matches don't abuse the wrestlers. As pretty much anyone who has looked even slightly beyond the mainstream media condescension can tell you, wrestlers -- especially indy wrestlers -- bust their asses, and no matter how well you know how to take a bump, coming off the top rope onto a concrete floor hurts. It hurts a lot. We go into the match between The Foul King and Yubiho knowing it's scripted, like most any wrestling match is, but we also see, in a very accurate way, that the match still involves two dedicated workers getting the unholy hell beaten out of them. It's gritty, bloody, and very true to what lo-fi wrestling is like in real life.

You don't have to know a lot about the Korean independent wrestling circuit to enjoy this movie. In fact, a few bones are thrown the way of American wrestling fans. There's the aforementioned tribute to Abdullah the Butcher as well as a scene in which Dae-ho studies backdropping techniques by watching a match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker. In fact, not only do you not have to be well-versed with the ins and outs of small time wrestling promotions in Korea; you don't need to be a wrestling fan at all, though it helps. At the heart of the wrestling action are characters and situations to which anyone can relate.

The final match between Dae-ho as The Foul King and Yubiho is actually quite spectacular. Dae-ho pulls out all the stops and, while technically sticking to the general outline of the script, really forces himself and Yubiho to turn it up several notches. They deliver a veritable match of the year to everyone's surprise, going from comedy antics to high flying to brutal brawling and hardcore death match style abuse. In the end, The Foul King does his job, so to speak, but there's no doubt he's turned a few heads in doing so.

I know my head was turned by The Foul King. It's funny, touching, well-crafted, and even brutal at times. Song Kang-ho also refused to use stunt doubles for the wrestling matches, even though it would have been easy to do so since he wore a mask. Instead, he got a serious taste of method acting by going through wrestling training himself and learning to do some pretty high-risk style moves. That's the icing on the cake, really, as this movie, like a slew of other recent Korean hits, delivers everything I want in a movie that I'm not getting from anywhere else. It has warmth, charm, a bunch of wrestling, and most importantly, a well-written story populated by believable, sympathetic, well-constructed characters. It's a dynamite film that will please anyone looking for a fun time at the movies, and wrestling fans should be doubly impressed since the movie handles their often insulted and laughed at business with an understanding, respect, and energy that I don't think even wrestling promotions can muster these days.

Labels: Action: Luchadores, Country: Korea, Year: 2000