Sze-to, once a judo champion, now a frequently drunk club owner, owes a great deal of money to his bosses, so he makes the wise decision to gamble whatever he has left away. Enter Tony, an eager newcomer giddy to challenge anyone and everyone to judo matches, especially Sze-to because of his reputation. Also, appearing uninvited at the nightclub is the homeless Mona, desperate to kick-start a singing career by getting a job at the club. When the bills and judo rivals start to pile up, Sze-to finds himself questioning his life and reasons for quitting the sport in the first place.
The list of mainstream Judo films throughout the years has been rather short for good reason-- the martial arts of throwing and chokeholds has never been the most visually arresting celluloid fighting style. With Throwdown, Johnnie To manages to stare this disadvantage straight in the eye and successfully overcome it by focusing on the flashier aspects: intense flipping, counter-flipping, counter-counter-flipping and endlessly intricate tossing fight sequences smoothly strung together.
Even the training sequences easily capture our attention with fighters flipping themselves and almost dancing through the streets in violent gymnastic floor exercise styles. In this, Throwdown also somewhat captures a modern day perspective on classic martial arts concepts. When we thought the era of challenging dojo masters to duels was over, along comes Tony Leung Ka-fai to fight all takers and lay down an invitation. The novelty of this along with To’s fantastic action sequences become the film’s greatest asset.
With the story, To treats the idea of judo as a metaphor for his fallen characters, however the script is difficult to take seriously with its silly themes and clichéd, underdeveloped characters. Mona’s dreams of making it big. Sze-to’s mysterious remorse and reluctance to fight. It all comes out rather clunky in the exposition and dialogue. Throwdown is dedicated to Akira Kurosawa (whose flawed first film, Sanshiro Sugata was about a judo fighter) and it has similar narrative problems—there is rarely any heart present in the character development.
This becomes quite apparent in Throwdown when To has his few set piece scenes that absolutely steal the show. These are unexpectedly lush and atmospheric moments with sweeping operatic scores, gorgeous nighttime Hong Kong settings and nary a word spoken. The dull moments in between seem to suggest that To is using the narrative more as a means of getting to these truly inspired, aesthetically beautiful scenes, rather than to tell a satisfying, effective story.
Reviewed by Tarun
