Release Date: 27 January 2005

Synopsis :

In 1934, the young Oyama Matsutatsu watches his farm servant, Bumsoo, fighting with Yakuza in the market in Kimje, Korea. Oyama admires Bumsoo and starts to learn the art if fighting. Seven years later, 18-year-old Oyama (Yang Donggeun) smuggles himself to Japan to go to an aviation school but instead finds himself being forced into the Kamikaze program. He resists and fights with the Japanese instructor. Kato, a karate master and captain of the program, offers to fight but Oyama runs away, earning Kato’s scorn.

Humiliated and wasting away his time, Oyama meets Bumsoo again and is rejuvenated. Bumsoo gives him a copy of Miyamoto Mushashi’s Book of Five Rings, a book by Japan’s greatest swordsman on how to fight and survive. Reading the book was a turning point for Oyama. He begins to wander the street at night saving women and others form bullies, robbers and worse. This is when Oyama meets Youko, a beautiful geisha with a pure soul and saves her from some cruel American soldiers. She starts to believe that he is the legendary vigilante hero Mouko and their tragic love begins.

One day Bumsoo is brutally killed by some yakuzas. Oyama goes to the mountain in grief. After a bout of incredibly intense self-training, Oyama searches throughout Japan hunting down the best martial arts masters to fight and conquer…

Movie Review:

Fighter In The Wind is based on the true story of Oyama Matsutasu (also known as Choi Bae Dal), the founder of Eiwa Karate. Directed by award-winning director Yang Yun Ho and stars a list of popular Korean talents: Yang Dong Geun, Hirayama Aya and Kato Masaya, this stunning action-packed movie was filled with excellent choreographed fighting scenes and breath-taking training sequences.

In the midst of onslaught in the cinema with biographical theme films, we are presented with this biography of another relatively unknown character that had inspired others in another place on another time. This time, it is the Korean martial art master, Choi Bae Dal who had ventured into Japan to hone his skills and shows that determination and persistence is the key to overcome any obstacle.

However standing besides those more pronounced biographies that are currently offering in the cinema, this film could not stir up the viewers’ emotions to a degree where the viewers could sympathize or be affected by the true-life event that was reenacted.

As a martial art film, the action bits came in chopped sequences. Each and every kicks and punches were captured individually and lacks smoothness in the flow of actions that could be found in any Jackie Chan’s movies. Nevertheless, the actions do have its own share of intensity and frenzy that can easily entertain any hardcore martial art fans.

One interesting aspect of this film was the usage of the Japanese language in a Korean Film. It helped to build authenticity instead of having Japanese folks suddenly being able to speak in fluent Korean language. However, as this is a Korean production, Korean subtitles were added whenever Japanese dialogue was used in the film. This had caused the subtitles, including the English and Mandarin subtitles, taking up three quarters of the screen!

The choice for the cast was a rather mixed bag. Yang Dong Geun does not really have the essential charisma of a martial arts figureheads, like Bruce Lee, to pull your heartstrings as he goes through his trials and tribulations. And having good-looking Japanese co-stars such as Hirayama Aya and Kato Masaya, who have stronger on-screen presence, makes one wonder why Yang Dong Geun is playing the lead.

Overall this film brought awareness of real life character Oyama Matsutasu (Choi Bae Dal) to the audiences. The action bits were also better than the average martial arts films have to offer but somehow it is less inspiring than what a biography were defined to be.

Movie Rating: C


Review by Richard Lim Jr