7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Former Olympic boxing hopeful Lim Deok-Kyu is a middle-aged widower with a teenage daughter and a struggling noodle shop. Producer Kyu Min wants him on her reality competition program, "Legendary Punch", which pits MMA fighters against former street fighters. Lim reluctantly joins the program to win cash and becomes an overnight sensation when he beats a professional fighter. As the program soars in popularity, two of Lim's high school friends also enter the contest. They share a dark past, and the contest reopens old wounds.
Starring: Hwang Jung-min, Jeong Woong-in, Yo-won Lee, Yoo Joon-sang, Yun Je-munForeign | 100% |
Martial arts | 19% |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
Korean: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Korean: LPCM 2.0
English, Korean
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After releasing their first Blu-ray, Masquerade, as a Best Buy exclusive (now available generally), CJ Entertainment has chosen a wide release for their sophomore entry, the 2013 Fists of Legend. Despite a title that suggests a martial arts extravaganza, the film is only partially about fighting. It's about the why of fighting, especially in the modern world where money and notoriety are far more powerful than brute force. Like David Mamet's underrated Redbelt, Fists of Legend examines what happens when the noble ideals behind the discipline of martial arts run smack into the dirty realities of commercial pragmatism. The director of Fists of Legend, Kang Woo-suk, is one of the biggest names in South Korean cinema, with box office hits such as Two Cops, the Public Enemy series and Silmido (a kind of tragic variation on The Dirty Dozen). The screenwriter, Jang Min-seok, was part of the team that wrote the hit spy thriller Secret Reunion. Between the dramatic sequences and the elaborately choreographed fights, filming on Fists of Legend lasted nearly six months, from July through November 2012.
Definitive information about the shooting format for Fists of Legend was not available, and the credits were not much help, since I don't read Korean. However, the cameras visible in the extras are clearly digital. In any case, the film was finished on a digital intermediate, and the digital files were presumably the source for CJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which is superb. Detail and clarity are excellent, and the image has no noise, aliasing, artifacts or other interference to distract from one's enjoyment. The color palette tends to be subdued and realistic, so that the contrast with the televised sequences for the Legendary Fighter TV program, with its hot lights and flashy colors, is immediately noticeable. At 154 minutes (including the credits for the English dub), Fists of Legend is a long film, but the average bitrate of 24.99 Mbps is comfortably within the range that major studios allow for action blockbusters, and the film has enough quiet passages to allow a compressionist to allocate the bit budget appropriately. The fight sequences proceed smoothly without motion artifacts, and compression issues were nowhere to be seen.
The televised bouts, with their amplified blows, crowd noises and amped-up sound effects for the viewing audience at home, are by far the showiest sequences for the DTS-HD MA 5.1 sound track, which can be experienced either in the original Korean with English subtitles or in an English dubbed version. Other sequences use the surrounds for a subtle sense of ambiance—e.g., the corporate offices where Lee and Son work, or the outdoor sounds of a high school outing where the younger versions of the four main characters have a meaningful interaction. The effective musical score is by Jo Yeong-wook, a regular collaborator with director Park Chan-wook (he scored the original Oldboy). However, the most memorable musical element from the soundtrack is the various versions of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", the theme from Rocky III, which Legendary Fighter uses for its intro. Whether the song serves as satire, sincere comment or both is something I leave for the individual viewer to decide. In addition to the 5.1 tracks, PCM 2.0 tracks in both Korean and English are also included. (Note: The Blu-ray's back cover lists the audio format as Dolby Digital on all four soundtracks, but the information is an error. The formats listed above have been verified and are correct.)
All of the extras are in Korean with English subtitles.
Fists of Legend works both dramatically and as a fight film, because the climactic tournament sequence is sufficiently intense to "pay off" the build-up, and by the time it happens, so many subplots intersect at the ring that the fight isn't just an exchange of blows. It's a reckoning with the past, a contest of values, a settling of scores, a war of social classes, a demonstration of loyalty among friends, and even more. The film takes its time reaching that moment, but only because it has so much interesting ground to cover. The Blu-ray presentation is first rate. Highly recommended.
2015
2013
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