Throw Down

Louis Koo plays the shabby former nightclub owner Szeto who spends his days in drunkenness. He managed his club badly and ran up a lot of debts. Now he has the crazy idea of robbing a bunch of gangsters. Unexpectedly his past – that involved judo – helps him to change track.

The martial arts have always been popular in Hong Kong genre films, but a judo film is still very rare. To made this film as a homage to the Japanese master film maker Kurosawa Akira, which explains his choice of an outspoken Japanese form of martial arts. It is also typical for To’s approach of always introducing innovations and shifts within the framework of the genre film. He is obviously a director who wants to keep himself fresh and will seldom choose the same solution more than once.

The film does not take the martial arts and Samurai references all too seriously (irrespective of his admiration for Kurosawa) and sometimes the film is almost a direct parody. Alongside dizzying cinematographic ingenuity, Throw Down displays a catchy sense of humour. (Gertjan Zuilhof)