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!).

Quick: An Action-Comedy That Will Make Your Head Explode

Let's pretend for a moment that you're a movie director and a highly amusing action-comedy script comes across your desk. From the looks of it, if you can get the required budget and the right actors, the action sequences promise to be breathtaking and the best comedic bits will be gut-bustingly funny. The problem is that the parts in between them are, frankly, kind of boring and border on the incomprehensible. What do you do? Do you bring in another writer, a crackerjack script doctor perhaps, to tighten up the exposition and iron out the wrinkles or do you go back to the original screenwriters and say, "Give me more action, more slapstick, and less talk." I'm guessing Cho Beom-gu took the latter approach -- many times in fact -- because while Quick still has a few, fairly short, dull explanatory sections that tell us why this rash of bombings is happening throughout Seoul, it's a hell of a lot less concerned with explaining why the leather-clad pop diva Ah-rom (Kang Ye-won) has a time-bomb motorcycle-helmet strapped to her head and more committed to having her scream nonsensically and gesticulate wildly as former-boyfriend/expert-motorcyclist/indie-courier Gi-soo (Lee Min-ki) races from one location to the next. Who cares why these two ex-lovers are being forced to execute a series of death-defying assignments when you get to see so many spectacular car pile-ups and so many glamorously fiery explosions? Not me.

You'll see Gi-soo's motorcycle leap from buildings, smash through glass, crash through steel, outrace trains, cop cars and overweight detectives running nonsensically after him on foot. The implausible part is a major contributing factor to why Quick is so deliriously good. The ridiculousness elevates the movie, even as it extends outside the action. How crazy does it get? How about when a weary, naked Ah-rom showers with her helmet on or when Gi-soo's self-deluded romantic rival Myeong-sik (Kim In-kwon) backbends under a sixteen-wheeler careening and aflame right above him? While that particular moment is clearly the result of some fancy green screen CGI special effects, Quick is by no means without its own dose of reality. Stick around for the closing credits which reveal behind-the-scenes footage of the bruises, the bang-ups, and the broken bones suffered by both the cast and their body doubles who skid motorcycles under trucks or propel their bodies recklessly through space for the perfect shot. The risks taken may seem crazy when you consider that they're all just for a silly action pic but personally, I think their efforts were worth it.