Very interesting take on martial arts being the center-point of a simplified story and a narrative about characters who settle things in rather "honorable" ways in a contemporary world where things and situations seem to occur and reflect ancient times separating them from every other things and situations of the modernized setting. Such a narrative where it glorifies the atmosphere of the past and to make it look like things are really happening or even take place in the past times was just too fresh to behold. The acting, the events, the relationship between all the characters the characters' motives, the conflicts, the solutions... Altogether played out as if another world of today's society was existing.

Something else that's special is also Johnnie To's implementation of martial arts for THROW DOWN. He decided to expose the art of judo as a main element and not as a subject matter to work out the story that rather doesn't focus mainly on martial arts but on everything else presented (again, the relationships of every character). That is to say that the actual martial arts choreography (arranged by Johnnie To regular action director Yuen Bun) shows some kind of the characteristics of each character and the story's point of views through them overall instead of the characters showing their relation to martial arts, so to speak. In fact, I didn't interpret the story to be thick anyway because there wasn't not much in the story that lead to anything major or added more. But rather, I think To's was taking the usual route he always take when doing movies; how the martial arts element work out the characters, the story that just happen to be centered on it. All I can say to this is: Welcome to the world of Johnnie To.

Top-notch stuff!