Fist & Furious: Cut to the Knife Fight

Fist & Furious isn't worried about being too obvious. A voiceover informs us immediately that Detective Yang (Jung Doo-hong) is a good cop who's been compromised by a gambling debt. His latest partner Yoon (Kim Sa-kwon) announces, upon his arrival, that he's a newbie who owes Yang his life. [Cue substantial flashback.] These details are important to get across quickly because the dialogue is intended to framework one excellent fight sequence after another.

Neither we, nor the North Korean expat / Dongjim TV News Reporter Nam (Ryu Deok-hwan), has rarely seen the 1 versus 100 battle done so consistently effective. Yang takes on a fireside gang of thugs with the lid of a pop-top can of tuna as his weapon; Yang knife-fights a gang of thugs who run across the top of pews inside a church between slayings. To describe Yang as tough is an understatement. We literally hear him crack bones under his foot. He's also survived having a knife embedded in his head. Not so lucky is the guy who gets bashed on a guardrail after he's underestimated Yang's fury.

That aforementioned knife, by the way, once belonged to the whore-mother of Yang's nemesis, a diabolical drug-dealer named Jung (Jung Eui-gap) who's got his own score to settle. We know this because Jung tell us as much for no compelling reason. As for the far-from-helpless young women caught in the middle of the drama — two sisters played by Seo Eun-ja and Kim Hae-In — they're as much props as people. They're here to get us, and director Ha Won-jun, from Point A to Point B. And by point, I mean a knife.