Every year a few more high school fighting movies emerge from Korea, but few are as likably conventional and entertaining as Art of Fighting. Often bogged down in weighty social commentary, historical context, and orgasmic explosions of brutal violence, movies like Friend and Once Upon a Time in High School tend to go places that audiences may not always expect or welcome. Breaking tradition with films like these, Art of Fighting remains focused on concluding its simple set-up, which basically involves the bullied boy getting his revenge and learning a few harsh facts of life along the way.
As it turns out, the ‘art’ of fighting that Baek’s ‘master’ teaches Jae, the avid pupil, is that playing dirty is necessary for survival. Throwing sand in the opponents face, knocking him down while his back is turned, kicking him in the groin, these are all legitimate ways of staying on top. All are hilariously portrayed during one of the film’s best scenes, when Baek and Jae watch two small kids fight in the playground. Unlike these boys, the studious and more passively inclined Jae has never punched someone in his life. All the more reason to keep a clean sheet and never fight, Baek suggests at first. Some fights just can’t be avoided, however. Being the bad boys (i.e. directionless, without hope) that they are, the school’s ignorant bullies prey upon Jae like relentless sharks. He can choose to submit to them forever, or gain the courage to fight back. Ultimately, he never really learns how to fight (we never see a prolonged training sequence that involves sparring), instead Jae is encouraged by Baek to discard his fear, to allow his feelings to bubble to the surface, and from then on to simply act on intuition and reflexes. The result of such intellectual guidance is Jae’s development of a winning aggressive technique.
Armed with alternatively a cigarette or a water pistol throughout the picture, Baek’s enigmatic and highly cheeky performance dominates proceedings. We never learn a great deal about him, except that he was certainly once a much bigger underworld player than he is now. The dynamic sub-plot that develops between Jae’s father and Baek, who of course becomes a surrogate father to Jae, is heartfelt, low key and entirely successful. Jae’s father might not have any time for his son, but that doesn’t mean he won’t go to extreme lengths to protect him from perceived trouble. A nice scene at the end, mimicking the staging of an earlier moment between Jae and his best friend, shows us in a refreshing way that fractured father-son relationships can be explored without the need for endless shouting, face slapping and pent-up angst.
Nothing about this film will remain long in the memory, but it remains a success in terms of its light objectives. The business of filmmaking, which, let’s face it, is a great job for serial liars and shysters, probably has a few too many relations to the artistry of fighting proferred here. Fans of intensely choreographed action, i.e. what we might commonly call the business end of fighting, won’t find much joy this time around, since first-time director Shin is more concerned with keeping his artistic approach clean and uncluttered. There’s no doubt that mainstream viewers tend to prefer over-the-top, histrionic approaches to ’empty’ genre material, e.g. Kwak Kyung-taek or Kang Woo-suk, which makes Shin’s leaner approach to even more pared down material just that little bit more interesting.