Last night I saw Kuro Obi. In English, Black Belt. I was pretty excited to see this movie because it said it was Japan’s answer to Ong Bak. I get pretty excited about fully legit fighting movies. I paid nine dollars to hire it out because I was at someone’s place without the internet (also known as “the third world”).

If you are looking for a movie with long, hyperrealistic but real fight scenes with some fairly basic characters and maybe a babe or two then maybe you should watch Ong Back with the music video for “Satisfaction” playing on the other monitor.

This is a movie with some real black belt karate practitioners (probably not the right word, but whatever) that is primarily driven by the characters. The fight scenes in this movie are pretty short, and the longest one is this really heavy character thing with some metaphorical stuff going on and no colour as a filmic device. Apparently the fighting is really authentic because the dudes in this movie are black belts, not actors.

Yeah, anyway. I liked this movie but I liked Ong Bak better because when I watch a fighting movie I basically just want to watch a fighting movie. Billing this movie as “Japan’s answer to Ong Bak” is a bit of a misnomer but I guess that is why I took it off the shelf, so I guess that is what you have to do to make money.

*sniff*

Written by: Zach.
Tags: film, kuro obi, ong bak.