The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee Can't Get You a GED

In the law of the jungle known as high school, you can gain a decisive advantage over the school bully if you're willing to stab him in the leg right before the big fight. That said, you'll have an even bigger advantage if your father is a Taekwondo instructor and you're willing to hit your opponent in the back of the head with a pair of nunchucks before the battle begins. Such are the lessons of The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do, Yu Ha's wistfully violent coming-of-age film about a painfully shy student named Hyeon-su (Kwone Sang-woo) who evolves from a simpering sidekick to rough-and-tumble classmate Woo-shik (Lee Jeong-jin) to a formidable Bruce Lee disciple tough enough to take on an entire gang of meanies entirely by himself.

Hyeon-su's a lover, not a fighter though, for while his training regimen does get him great delts and a sweet set of abs, his luck with the ladies leaves something to be desired. His big crush Eun-ju (Han Ga-in) thinks of him as a friend, a kind of eunuch she can hang out with while talking about music and getting drunk. The super-hot cougar (Kim Bu-seon), who runs the local cafe and wants to get down his pants, doesn't strike his fancy. (Something she learns the hard way after unzipping his pants.) This is one young man who's going to have to make do with gaining the respect of his father by kicking ass. Since Dad's made a business out of his own fists of fury, he knows all about the power of the punch. Violence is the answer!

The notion that muscles reign over the mind recurs throughout The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do: Teachers brutalize wayward students for being stupid or disobedient; hall monitors shove anyone who dares to make eye contact or talk back; Hamburger (Park Hyo-jun), the fat kid who sells bestial porn to earn tuition money, slaps a girl repeatedly who won't dance with him at the local disco. In Seoul in the '70s, smarts didn't get you much as a teenager. Better to hit the weights, kick the heavy bag, and learn to do pushups on your finger tips. Pining for the pretty girl on the bus is a waste of time. Re-enacting a scene from a Bruce Lee movie is a lot more fun. So is running through the hallway breaking windows and screaming "All the schools in Korea are fucked!" Now that's a total blast.

Bloody Reunion: Slashing Through the Hierarchy of Pity

By most accounts Mrs. Park (Oh Mi-hee) was a terrible teacher who belittled her students for being too poor, too fat, too slow and too dumb. So why have seven of them gathered together for a little party honoring her royal rottenness before she coughs her way out of this world and into the next? Before you have time to answer that question, the limping jock (Park Hyo-jun), the molested rocker (Lee Dong-kyu), the surgically-enhanced pretty girl (Lee Ji-hyeon) and the rest will be desperately seeking to evade the X-acto blade of some mysterious serial killer who may or may not be the deformed kid that Mrs. Park kept in her basement and who drove her husband to suicide. Why this hideously misshapen youth would want to slaughter the entire class is less clear. Is his mind as disfigured as his face? What would make more sense is that the seven students would wield the baseball bat and the kitchen knife on Mrs. Park herself. Well, it's not that they don't try. But the crazy killer in the bunny mask keeps getting in the way. The only one who survives (no spoiler here; this is made clear from the start) is Mi-ja (Seo Yeong-hie), an unremarkable student whom Mrs. Park has taken in as a nursemaid while she waits for the great beyond. Or a logical conclusion. Neither is forthcoming.