Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Fists of Legend Blu-ray Movie Review

A Man, a Past and a Noodle Shop

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 16, 2014

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.

Central to the film is a mixed martial arts TV show, a kind of MMA American Idol, in which older men who fought legendary street battles in their youth, are brought back from their ordinary adult lives to contend against professional fighters or, depending on the circumstances, others of their kind. The brainchild of an icy TV producer named Hong Gyu-min (well-known Korean actress Lee Yo-won), the show is called Legendary Fighter, and the contrast between the grandeur of the name and the middle-aged wads of dough who enter the ring demonstrates how far reality TV has departed from the image of the great martial artists of yore. Now the "legends" are something to mock, or at least that seems to be the goal of Ms. Hong, who is like a stripped-down, robotic version of Faye Dunaway's opportunistic programmer in Network.

But then Ms. Hong manages to recruit a different sort of fighter. His name is Lim Deok-kyu (Hwang Jung-min), and he seems an unlikely contestant for an MMA bout: a soft-spoken widower with a troubled teenage daughter, the proprietor of a noodle shop that is going broke for lack of customers, still bossed around by his mother. Twenty-five years ago, however, Lim was a different person. As revealed in lengthy flashbacks intercut with the present-day sequences, Lim was an intensely driven boxer, who trained constantly hoping to qualify for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. (In the 1980s sequences, Lim and other key characters are played by young actors chosen for their resemblance to the older cast, most of them making their film debut.) When Lim enters the ring on Legendary Fighter a quarter century later, his old skills return, and he knocks down a far more experienced opponent. The crowd goes wild, and the ratings soar.

Lim is reluctant to continue, but he needs the money. Also, his newly found notoriety brings customers to the noodle shop in numbers so great he can barely keep up with demand. But Lim's next opponent is a surprise, because it is someone from his past: a high school acquaintance named Shin Jae-seok (Yoon Je-moon), a former street punk and now a small time gangster, whose elaborate gang tattoos cause Ms. Hong to halt taping when Shin tears off his shirt in the ring. This is not the sort of thing they want on their show, she tells Shin, and it will be edited out—but then somehow the footage later appears on YouTube. Ms. Hong is no fool, and she has also done her research. The matching of Lim and Shin was not an accident.

As the flashbacks gradually illuminate the events in the present (and eventually explain what happened to Lim's Olympic career), two other faces from the past come into focus. One, Son Jin-ho (Jung Woong-in), is the head of one of South Korea's largest construction companies. The other, Lee Sang-hoon (Yoo Jun-sang), is an executive who works for him. After a few discreet phone calls are placed, Mr. Son decides that it would be good for the company to have a presence on Legendary Fighter, and he orders Lee to volunteer. Eventually, the three former acquaintances from high school are all competing in an MMA tournament with a huge grand prize (the subtitles say $200,000). The favorite to win is a suspiciously well-trained fighter known as "Turtle", who has the backing of a professional gambler. Indeed, now that Legendary Fighter is a major hit, the action among bookmakers and sports gamblers is huge, and everyone is looking for an edge.

Beneath its martial arts veneer, Fists of Legend is about the social and economic forces that shape people's lives: that make one person a criminal and another a CEO, although their values and temperaments may be similar; that make one decent, hard-working man a struggling noodle shop owner, even after he's done everything right, and another a corporate scapegoat after years of faithful service. The film contrives a kind of escape hatch from these powerful forces that lets honorable conduct win the day, but it's a limited victory. The fat cats stay fat, and Ms. Hong will be back next week with a whole new roster for Legendary Fighter.

Fists of Legend Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Fists of Legend Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.)

Fists of Legend Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All of the extras are in Korean with English subtitles.

• The Living Legend (1080i; 1.78:1; 22:11): In a series of behind-the-scenes selections, this featurette documents the various stages of filming, with heavy emphasis on the painstaking choreography of the fight sequences and the training that preceded them.



• Cry of 3 Men (1080i; 1.78:1; 7:02): This featurette covers the recording of the song entitled "No Regrets" that plays over the closing credits. It was produced by recording star Yoon Do-hyun of the rock band YB, who also supplies one of the three voices. The other two belong to actors Hwang Jung-min (Lim) and Yoo Jun-sang (Lee), who had performed in musicals but were not professional singers.



• I'm the Best (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:06): Highlights of a publicity photo shoot featuring both sets of actors, younger and older, portraying the three former high school acquaintances who face each other as combatants on Legendary Fighter.



• 19th Outing (1080i; 1.78:1; 10:01): These are edited highlights from the film's South Korean premiere, including an interview session with the director and principal cast.

Fists of Legend Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.