Sang-Hwan's (Ryu Seung-Beom) a juvenile delinquent who gets thrown into prison, and after a stay in solitary confinement, San Hwan is invited to join the prison's boxing club to "let loose some steam" and boxing gradually taught him for the first time that he could actually do something. While serving time, his father has passed away suddenly and his grandmother has had a stroke. In shock, Sang-hwan prepares to win the amateur title in an effort to shake off his grief.

As these two boxers lead their down-spiraling ways of life, destiny has a cruel way of intertwining lives and the only way they can meet is in the ring.

Tae-sik (Choi Min-sik) is a down on his luck former silver medalist boxer. Just to make ends meet he takes to the streets to be a human punching bag for people wanting to relieve stress. It costs them 10,000 won for 2 or 3 minutes and can try to hit him as much and as hard as possible. All these beatings take their toll on his body, yet he has no real choice but to continue as he tries to make money to keep his family together, which is harder than it sounds.

Sang-wan (Ryu Seung-bum) takes up boxing after he's sent to prison for beating a man who dies of a heart attack, while trying to rob him. It's difficult on his family, but his father continually visits him and tries to let him know that people still care for him. While in prison he gets beat up and humiliated by another prison boxer, so he starts to focus himself to be the best he can be.

Along comes an opportunity for each of these boxers to prove themselves to their families and the world. They square off and one of them wins the competition. But, in the end, they really both win in their own way, by making their families happy. It's a very fulfilling ending to a really great movie. However, it wasn't perfect in the way it was made. I was confused for a good part of the movie, with the story jumping between the two parts of the story. No explanation was given as to why we were watching two completely distinct parts of a movie, and it wasn't clear that it would all come together until about 75% of the way through the film. This is just a minor complaint, however, because the rest of the movie was really entertaining.

This was a great follow-up to the Ryu brothers' previous movies, No Blood No Tears and Arahan. All three of these movies are completely different genres and it's nice to see how varied these two can be in their filmmaking. I highly recommend Crying Fist for everyone.

First is Kang Tae-sik (Min-sik Choi), who's an out-of-work, and middle-aged, silver-medalist from 1990, whose forced to make his money on the streets, by being the "human punching bag" for all those who have some frustration that they want to get out. Aside from the money-problems, he's also having trouble with his marriage, where his wife uses prostitution as a means to make money.

Our second protagonist is Yu Sang-hwan (Seung-beom Ryu), a young punk, who has distanced himself from his family, and after a failed attempt at robbing a man in a parking garage, is thrown in jail. After a lunch brawl, he's asked to join the boxing team that's set up in the prison. Thinking there's nothing to lose, he accepts in hopes of defeating the top boxer who did a number on him in a previous fight.

I thought this was an interesting and unique film. I liked how every 15-minutes or so, we go back to the other character, so essentially we're going back and forth, showing how the two men are both struggling to make it to another day and how boxing is really the only way to get their lives back together. What I found most interesting was the fact that since we have two main characters that eventually meet up in the ring, there was no telling who'd win. Normally we'd know the main character would win in the end, but since there are two mains, there was no telling.

Struggling with family difficulties, money troubles, and local thugs, this movie is a solid dramatic piece following the lives of two different men, with one common goal.

7/10