A Fighter's Blues (2000)
Reviewed by: mrblue on 2003-10-08
A Fighter's Blues has Andy Lau as a kickboxer named Tiger who meets and falls in love with a reporter named Pim (Inthira Charoenpura) during a tournament. After one match, Tiger's temper gets the best of him and he ends up killing one of his opponents, which sends him to prison for fifteen years. Upon his release, Tiger travels to Thailand to find Pim only to find out that she has died, but not before giving birth to their daughter. Now, Tiger must try and create a releationship with his daughter while restoring his name in the kickboxing world.

I thought A Fighter's Blues might be an enjoyable piece of fluff like a lot of the kickboxing films (or sports movies in general) that had preceeded it. However, there's really not much kickboxing in the movie at all. Much of the running time is dominated by drama, which is not bad in spirit, but the execution here is pretty bad. First of all, the dialogue is that annoying English/Chinese mix used in more and more HK films nowadays, which I guess is supposed to give the film an international appeal, but just makes the actors look bad. But that's not really saying a whole hell of a lot in this case, because the actors can't seem to get their way out of a wet paper bag with a chainsaw.

This is definitely not some of Andy Lau's best work; the big idea on how to show how much he's changed since being in prison is to have him sport a goatee and look constipated. The other actors (mostly unknown Thais) don't fare much better, and don't even get me started on the annoying kid actors in here. They make that brat from Rumble in the Bronx look like Sir f'n Laurence Oliver by comparison. Surprisingly, the girl that plays Andy's daughter (Apichaya Thanatthanapong) actually does a good job, but it's the lone bright spot in a sea of bad acting and hammy dialogue.

Things are not totally horrible here. I will grant that A Fighter's Blues sets out what it attempts to do in creating a decent drama; it's nothing great, but it won't make you tear your hair out either. The movie does look really good for the most part, and Andy Lau fans will most likely go ga-ga for this movie, especially with the number of shots of a shirtless Mr. Lau. But for those expecting some solid kickboxing action or maybe something off the beaten path like some of Lau's newer films should probably save this one for a rainy day rental.