The Divine Move: Go Ahead and Hit Me Again

In the iEra, the nerds may have risen to power but they still don't know how to take a punch or land a roundhouse kick. So when a poorly-groomed gamer (Jung Woo-sung) whose specialty is Go ends up unjustly sentenced to the slammer, all he wants in exchange for giving master boardgame tips to his jailer is to receive ongoing martial arts training from his fellow convicts so he can kick some serious ass when he gets out. The prison fighting lessons in The Divine Move are built around the philosophy that good fighters must be beat up to learn how to beat up others. Sound crazy? Well, my grandfather took a similar approach with my father and it worked for my dad so I had no reason to doubt that it would work here too.

When you see Jung remove his shirt during one of his final prison brawls, you'll likely gasp at how effective such training can be. The actor is shredded to a point that makes you think this prison comes with a nutritionist/dietician, too. His character hasn't let his Go skills deteriorate while in the big house either. As luck would have it, he's sequestered next to a blind genius of Go whenever he ends up in solitary confinement; the two square off by tapping out moves through the wall. Further luck: Someone's left behind some chalk. And so he's a Go graffiti artist. He's a street-style fighter. He's an uncharted player. Plus he's a master networker.

That last talent allows him to entice a fine crew to exact his grand revenge, my favorite of the lot being a one-handed techie (Ahn Kil-kang) who has a nice variety of attachable parts including a hammer for self-defense. These are nerds who are no longer satisfied with outwitting former tormentors. They want blood on their knuckles, not just on their hands. Those jerks who killed our hero's brother (Kim Myeong-soo) are going to get iced, one (Lee Beom-su) quite literally in a freezer showdown to the death. Getting the girl (Lee Si-young) — a master Go player herself — is just Cho Beom-gu's fantasy fulfillment for all the nerdy gamers watching the movie (which they should!).

Once Upon a Time in Seoul: Watching the Rope That You'll Hang Yourself With

There are two movies going on in Bae Hyeong-jun's oddball Once Upon a Time in Seoul (a.k.a. Boys Don't Cry). One concerns two orphaned teens (Lee Wan and Song Chang-ui) peddling stolen goods alongside a crew of young misfits in the black market of post-war Korea; the other concerns two 20-somethings living out the same plot with kids and middle-aged adults. This freaky double-take is what happens when you cast actors way too old for their parts. A story of youth becomes a story of late bloomers; innocent children morph into incompetent grownups. And that's just the beginning. Since the one female gang-member (Park Grina) dresses like a boy and appears twenty years older from certain angles, the two lead characters now appear to have either latent homosexual tendencies or a mother complex. Actually, the man-child played by Song might be looking for a father figure too since he's clearly enamored of one kick-ass street thug (Ahn Kil-kang) who's mastered the bullwhip and the swagger. In a movie like this, action sequences can make you forgive and forget but the big final fight scene here -- in which the upstart and an evil crime boss duel with whips instead of knives -- is mostly memorable for being so anti-climatic.

The City of Violence: A Mediocre Movie That Packs Extra Punch

More than one not-so-hot movie has been rescued by a flashy martial arts finale. Ryu Seung-wan's The City of Violence takes this approach to the extreme: Every fifteen minutes or so comes another playfully shot, precisely choreographed battle that's as visceral as it is gymnastic. There's one great free-for-all in a police station, an unrelenting rumble with an ever-growing street crowd of baseball players, break dancers, and the girls' field hockey team, and an extended fight-to-the-finish that incorporates sliding doors, hilarious hair-pulling and one suddenly fingerless hand. The connection between all this killing and the founding of a casino feels negligible at best and the villain (Lee Beom-su) is neither clever nor charismatic. But ultimately, the WHY behind each punch and kick proves irrevelant. Every time Seok-hwan (Ryu) and his buddy, the detective Tae-su (Jung Doo-hong who's also the fight choreographer), decide to exact physical revenge on behalf of their old pal Wang-jae (Ahn Kil-Kang), you're too busy admiring the roundhouse kicks and wincing at the mouthfuls of blood to worry about something as simple as character motivation. If you need more than fisticuffs, focus on the costumes and the sets which are also thoughtfully executed.