Emotional, long, but very good sports drama

Rating: 9/10 (16 August 2012)

Who will win the fight? Bane or the guy who fought The Thing? Seriously now, the acting in this movie was way above the genre of this film. I know it was a sports fighting movie and I expected things on par with van Damme Asian tournament films. Boy, was I wrong!
The first thing to note about the movie is that it is long. It spans two hours and twenty minutes. The first half sets up the characters and how their dysfunctional family got them to where they are. I expected the second half to be filled with fighting action and it was, but only half. The makers of the film realised it was more important to show the mindset and state of spirit of the characters, let them develop rather than show only fights. And so they got a beautiful film.
Bottom line: for this genre, the movie is clearly amongst the best. It doesn't uselessly inspire the audience to take up fighting or hate or love one of the characters. Much better, they give us two characters to love and the decision, up to the final fight, is the viewer's: how would you like this fight to end? That question, that situation in which you get to think and choose for yourself is almost unprecedented in a sports movie and more appropriate to more philosophical high brow films and makes the end result irrelevant. Good job!