Kick The Moon (2001)

There is a legend amongst the kids at a certain school about an epic fight that took place many years before, between their school and a Seoul school on a field trip. The scale and bloodiness of the fight is said to be still unmatched, and in their minds the kids who led the two schools into battle are the ultimate heroes. What they don't realise is that one of those leaders now runs a small street noodle stall in their town, and the other is actually their home class teacher... not the powerful gangsters they expected them to be. The one kid from the school that did grow up to be a top gangster is ironically the only one that didn't take part in the fight, but who studied and developed his brains instead of fighting.

The movie is basically a character piece, and each character has their own thread of story that sometimes run parallel to each other, sometimes cross each other and do eventually tie together. The main characters are the teacher and the gangster, who meet each other after all the intervening years and strike up a friendship they could never have had when one was the school boss and the other the school geek. The two of them clash, however, when they meet one of the pupils' sister, a very cute and sassy girl. Their story is echoed in the secondary thread, about the girl's brother and his friends - high school students who are enamoured with tales of gangs and gangsters, and cynical about the value of an education.

A lot of the movie is dialogue heavy, and it's well written and delivered, never becoming boring. Thankfully the subtitle translation is excellent, as this is a movie that would die with poor subs.

So half the movie is dialogue, and the other half of the movie is... well, people beating the crap out of each other for the most part. There is a ton of fighting in the movie - indeed for the first half there is possibly more fighting than talking. No kung-fu here, just street brawling, but well choreographed and filmed.

The movie is sold as a "comic action special" on the DVD case, which I think probably creates the wrong expectations. It's not 'comic action' at all. It is a funny movie, but it's a subtle humour that's mainly in the performances and dialogue delivery rather than anything that is said or done. Possibly wryly humourous, though it's so long since I've used that phrase I forget exactly what it means .