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'Crying Fist' Depicts Fight for Hope

By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter

An upcoming local film tells a story about two men who have every desperate reason to win a boxing tournament. Although only one will win the final, its director and actors say the movie is more about living with a hope rather than about someone becoming a champion.

"What they want to achieve is not something huge like getting a world championship title but just finding a reason to live", said Ryoo Seung-wan, director of the film "Crying Fist" (Chumoki Wunda) in a news conference after Tuesday's preview screening. "It's more important for them to live without giving up hope than to become a champion.

"I'm not into boxing, but I admire boxers who go through long hard physical and mental training for a match and fight in the primitive way without any equipment", said Ryoo, who is well known for his previous action-packed films such as "Arahan", "No Blood No Tears" and "Die Bad".

The film focuses more on characters and their emotions than events or accidents, the director said.

Starring Choi Min-sik from "Oldboy" and Ryoo Seung-bum from "Arahan", the movie revolves around Tae-sik (Choi) and Sang-hwan (Ryoo) who people think are losers (as they do themselves), but they try to test themselves through a rookies' championships and meet each other in a final.

Tae-sik, a once famous silver medallist boxer, must win the match to prove he can achieve something as he is on the verge of losing everything, including his wife and son. While 19-year-old prisoner Sang-hwan needs the champion belt to get temporary leave from prison to visit his father's tomb and meet his grandmother.

As the film takes place in a boxing ring, the two main actors found it challenging to film fighting scenes since they had to come to really hit each other.

"To depict the fighting scenes as realistically as possible, we sometimes had to exchange real blows and also lose weight", Ryoo said.

"Of course, I also found it really hard to shoot physically-challenging fighting scenes", Choi said. "But we liked filming since we could all create the characters and scenes together in a free atmosphere, not just following the script".

Another difficulty he and Ryoo found was that they had to work separately but make each characters' story develop at a similar pace and meet at the climax, Choi said.

The movie will be released in local theaters on April 1.

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