Audience Member
I had trouble with the beginning of it as it swung from very serious and heart wrenching to slap stick silly. But despite that it did an incredible job of portraying a woman finally woken up and at the same time fighting her own fear to stand up, a daughter who is emotionally broken from a lifetime of witnessing abuse, a cowardly coach who is confronted with reality of what he is fighting for, and other characters who are vibrant and realistic. By the end I was crying. A very good movie.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
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Audience Member
Watch Ha-Eun get her groove back by standing up to her abuser in a kickboxing match. Enough meets Rocky when, at a press conference, a victim of horrendous beatings threatens to fight her professional kickboxer husband. It would be depressing for the most part, if it wasn't full of comedic breaks. Quite tragic, but great direction, acting, and tearjerking ending.
So they lock up a woman for preventing her daughter from being hit in the head with a golf club? C'mon South Korea.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
jesse o
This movie requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Even more so than superhero films, or something like Guardians of the Galaxy. I say this because it's established, from the start, that these movies are set in alternate universes with people with superpowers isn't something strange. This movie expects you to believe that the sports commission in Korea, that I'm sure oversees the kickboxing/MMA circuit, would allow a woman with literally no martial arts experience to fight her husband, who's a WORLD CHAMPION KICKBOXER. I don't doubt that there's a sleazy kickboxing/boxing/MMA promoter that's tried to get a fight between a man and a woman to happen, but just because they want it to happen doesn't mean that they'll get to book such a fight. They have to go through the sports commission and no self-respecting sports commission would ever allow such a fight to happen. So, right out of the gate, you're asking a lot of people. At least of people who have a working knowledge of how sports commission works, and that's not the audience that's gonna watch this movie, so I guess they can get away with this. But, to me, it was a little ridiculous. But if the storytelling is good then who cares, right? Unfortunately, the story is no good either. Domestic abuse is a very real and serious issue that a lot of people have to suffer through and while the film captures some of the fear and helplessness that these people feel, it also spends a great amount of time trying to force comedy and slapstick in there. Really? In a film about a woman choosing to fight her husband because she's grown tired of years of physical and mental abuse, you see fit to ram comedy in there? It's not like they make fun of the women that go through this horrible ordeal on a daily basis, but it still feels completely out of place. Well actually, now that I remember, there's this man that goes to the gym in order to defend himself from his wife. This is actually played for laughs and that's just wrong to me. I'm not saying that men who suffer from domestic abuse have it as bad as women do, not suggesting that even for a second, but this type of domestic abuse shouldn't be played for jokes just because it happens to be a man going through it. This guy couldn't weigh more than 100 pounds and his wife is absolutely massive, so she could really fuck him up if she wanted to. I don't know why the film expects me to think one type of abuse is deplorable and not the other. It's kind of fucked up to be honest. I thought the idea was to stop domestic abuse in this film's "universe". But I digress, this was just something really strange about the movie. The actual training for the fight is an absolute joke for most part. Yet I'm expected to believe that she has a shot against someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a world-class kickboxing champion. I realize this is the female version of Rocky, with kickboxing, but at least Rocky, while a journeyman fighter thought to be a tomato can for Apollo Creed, at least he was still a trained boxer. He still had what experts called a puncher's chance. This woman literally has no experience in any martial arts and you're supposed to take her seriously as a contender against her husband, who deserves to be beaten within an inch of his life. It's absolutely preposterous to me. It's not that I'm against the premise, which would work if it was actually a woman experience in martial arts, but the fact that she has no experience, trains poorly for most of her camp, yet she actually BEATS her husband in the fight. IMPOSSIBRU. DOES NOT COMPUTE. Another problem is that the film just doesn't have like a satisfactory conclusion. Yes, she beats her husband, who deserved every bit of the ass kicking he supposedly got, but it's not particularly vicious and, quite frankly, I think the guy got off easy. The acting is ok and there's some melodrama here and there, but that was to be expected considering the subject matter, and the fact that it's a South Korean movie. It's not as manipulative as you would expect actually. But, as you can tell, I didn't like this movie at all. I just found it incredibly hard to get into because of what I've mentioned. It would've been better if the film was just a straight-up revenge film, where she ends up gruesomely killing her husband. That would've been so much more satisfying than what I saw. Can't really recommend this movie in any way, shape, or form. Bedevilled is better, even though it's completely different from this film. But that's how you properly make a film about revenge.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Not entirely believable, but I give the director kudos for attempts at handling an exceptionally delicate/sensitive issue with a fair degree of (at least mental/emotional) authenticity, while still simultaneously attempting to send audiences off with a hopeful resolution. That's a tough combination to accomplish normally (hope out of despair), much less out of a rather hopelessly impossible situation, as this starts out to be. So in good spirit, I suspend disbelief temporarily, and give this movie credit for its bravery, and for the worthwhile message that sometimes the impossible really is possible.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie was crazy inspiring. It was a realistic as it could be with this kind of plot. The comedy was actually funny without trying too hard to be funny. The trials and adversity she went through in herself as well as with her husband was all too real and displayed pretty well. Its not a normal martial arts movie but a drama with martial arts in it. It keeps you wondering the whole time how she is going to ever overcome and you see that she had to truly face her fear and truly stand up to be victorious. I'm glad I watched this.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The actors did a great job in depicting the characteristics of an abuser and the abuse, though the kid was a little creepy. It also shows a lot of the cultural differences when it comes to how people respond to domestic violence between the US and Korea.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
Full Review
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