Review of The Foot Fist Way (2006) by Nick O — 16 Jan 2010

Self-control, perseverance, integrity, indomitable spirit-- what it takes to make it at the Concord Tae Kwon Do Studio. It's only a coincidence that those are all characteristics of this very funny movie.

I was ashamed to have ranked Observe and Report (writer-director Jody Hill's later masterpiece) as the tenth best movie of the year without having ever seen The Foot Fist Way. My first viewing left me completely satisfied. Jody Hill's love for his characters is immense, and without any this movie would have taken a wrong turn into a generic R-rated comedy, fit with curses, sex and violence. But he doesn't, and instead Foot Fist Way becomes an eccentric romp on the art of martial arts and frankly, fist-fighting in general.

The Foot Fist Way is the type of movie where you'd see a "Do Not Attempt" warning before the opening credits. Hill never really gives the audience a chance to contemplate what an asshole leader Fred Simmons (Danny McBride) really is. Instead he films the movie in a way where we see him as a good guy rather than a villain. It 100% works.

Fred Simmons is another example of Hill's characters that come out victorious even when they're really not; by the end they're a different man than they were in the beginning, yet they appear exactly as they were before. The Foot Fist Way is a giant middle finger to our modern way of deciding between what is right and wrong. The movie doesn't once apologize for anything that it's doing and some people just won't appreciate that. That's fine. The Foot Fist Way is an offer to submerge yourself in a world where the laws of decency no longer apply. Take it.