Pulpmovies Reviews

Set in Rotterdam, Fighting Fish is the first Dutch martial arts film. And, as kung-fu movies go, it’s pretty good.

The Plot Centres on A-Ken (Kim Ho Kim) who travels to Rotterdam to find the killers of his brother, Chau and to take revenge.

Initially, everything looks straightforward enough – A-Ken was a member of an a gang and fellow gang member, Koh (Chung-Huen Lam) points A-Ken in the direction of a rival gang that he blames for Chau’s death and A-Ken’s fists and feet start to fly.

I was going to wait until I’d got to the end of the synopsis before talking about the martial arts in the film, but here seems to be a better point to start digressing. This is a martial arts film, after all.

First up, the fight scenes are impressive. Many of the cast members are professional martial artists and it shows – there is a level of realism that you simply don’t achieve if you have to switch between actors and stuntmen. The action flows well and you get the feeling that what you’re seeing on the screen is what was happening on the set – no dependence on camera trickery, wire-work or other special effects here.

On the other hand, I did get a strong sense that I was watching sportsmen as opposed to gangsters and this did tend to pull me out of the film occasionally.

And, dammit, I like wire-work. People flying improbably through the air may be unrealistic, but it’s certainly spectacular.

So, back to the plot where it becomes apparent that things are not quite as clear-cut as they first appeared and A-Ken finds himself of a journey through the Chinese gangland of Rotterdam as he seeks the truth about his brother’s death.

And to complicate matters further, A-Ken meets Jennifer (Chantal Janzen) with whom he quickly becomes romantically involved. Of course, not everyone is happy about this relationship – in fact no-one is happy about this relationship.

Jennifer’s older brother, Marc (Ron Smoorenburg) doesn’t think that A-Ken is good enough for his little sister, while the Chinese community objects to the fact that A-Ken is seeing a gweilo girl.

This is probably the strongest aspect of the film, dealing not only with the difficulties faced by an immigrant community, but also the self-inflicted nature of some, if not many, of these problems. The feeling expressed in the film is that western people see the Chinese community as Fighting Fish; strange and exotic, but without understanding the true nature of the fish. In the same way that fighting fish cannot be together without fighting to the death, the two cultures in the film will also destroy each other if forced to live together.

It’s a telling observation – especially given the current Dutch concern with integration – that Marc eventually accepts that A-Ken whereas neither Jennifer’s Chinese friends, nor the Chinese gang with which A-Ken has become involved are willing to accept that Jennifer may not conform to their prejudices.

Overall, Fighting Fish is a competent, if less than perfect, martial arts film that makes a pretty good attempt at investigating issues of immigration, integration and cultural differences.

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