Once Upon a Time in High School

Once Upon a Time in High School
Theatrical poster
Hangul	말죽거리 잔혹사
Revised Romanization	Maljukgeori janhoksa
McCune–Reischauer	Maljukgŏri chanhoksa
Directed by	Yoo Ha
Produced by	Cha Seung-jae No Jong-yoon
Written by	Yoo Ha
Starring	Kwon Sang-woo Han Ga-in Lee Jung-jin
Music by	Kim Jun-seok
Cinematography	Choi Hyeon-gi
Edited by	Park Gok-ji
Production company	Sidus FNH
Distributed by	CJ Entertainment
Release dates	January 16, 2004 (2004-01-16)
Running time	116 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean

Once Upon a Time in High School: The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (Korean: 말죽거리 잔혹사) is a 2004 South Korean drama film. The background of the film is set in a high school in South Korea, 1978. The original Korean title literally means "cruel history of Maljuk street" and one of the filming locations was the present neighborhood of Yangjae-dong, Seocho District in Seoul.^[1][2]

Synopsis

Hyun-soo (Kwon Sang-woo), transfers to another school, which is notorious for being the single worst and most brutal high school in the country alone. He is assigned to the most bottom-rank class and experiences violence in classroom by a group of delinquents in his class led by Jong-hoon (Lee Jong-hyuk), who is a stereotypical Korean bully in school. The teachers are also cruel and sadistic to the students, utilizing brutality upon them, as all Korean teachers did in the 70s and still do to this day. One day on the bus, Hyun-soo sets eyes on and falls in love with Eun-joo (Han Ga-in), and one day when a group of schoolboys start teasing her on the bus, Hyun-soo takes the opportunity to gain her respect, even though it meant starting a riot. After a chase through the neighborhood and being caught in their hiding place (a rat prompted Eun-joo to scream), one of Hyun-soo's friends Kim Woo-sik (Lee Jung-jin), who happens to be a son of a popular actress, steps in and knocks them out. A relationship triangle was formed between Hyun-soo, Woo-sik, and Eun-joo. One day Hyun-soo while riding his bike noticed Woo-sik and Eun-joo arguing. Taking into account that Hyun-soo was at a major disadvantage of winning her heart due to his only achievement being sharing an umbrella with her on a rainy day while Woo-sik did more, he meets her at a rooftop that night and bonds with a romantic song playing on the radio presumably bought for the occasion, much to Woo-sik's jealousy when he saw them unnoticed when he reached the rooftop. One day Hyun-soo and Woo-sik got in a fight over Eun-joo and their friendship was cut off, which made Woo-sik the tough person he is more arrogant and narcissistic than ever before, going to the extent of humiliating and beating Ham Jye-bok who is called by his nickname Hamburger (Park Hyo-jun), who sells pornography to other students. He leaves the school and presumably drops out after losing an intense fight with Jong-hoon on the rooftops, never to be seen again. Hyun-soo is now facing greater problems of his own when he concludes Eun-joo left him for Woo-sik again and he has been receiving poor grades prompting his cruel and sadistic father, a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and an owner of a Tae Kwon Do gym, to berate him and resort to extreme violence, violence far more extreme than the ones conducted and condoned by any teacher or person of authority combined, to 'discipline' him (as he always did even for the most minor of wrongdoings Hyun-soo has done prior to the events of this movie, and according to Hyun-soo, he is a kind man to everyone but him) and labeled him a 'surplus man', a derogatory term used to describe a person without a future, and kicked him out of his house, nearly driving the hopeless student to suicide. No longer able to put up with the conduct of Jong-hoon and his boys as well as the extreme brutality and violence being put up by the teachers, Hyun-soo starts to train himself in Jeet Kune Do, inspired by his childhood hero Bruce Lee. Hyun-soo challenges Jong-hoon to a fight one day when he is no longer able to put up with his irrational behaviour. On the same rooftop where Woo-sik lost a fight, Jong-hoon and his gang mates are grievously injured by Hyun-soo's nunchaku and expertise in Jeet Kune Do. After the intense fight, although he won, Hyun-soo still didn't feel any victory. Authorities including a general who is called 'puppet soldier' by students were alerted and they started accusing him even though it was Jong-hoon who was antagonizing others. At this point, badly influenced by the brutality from his psychopath of a father and still being accused rather than honored after all this time and effort he invested to master Jeet Kune Do for the sake of bringing justice to the school and proving himself wrong of his status as a surplus man, Hyun-soo totally lost it and smashed some nearby windows and hurled his nunchucks at them and cursed Korea's entire education system for being so corrupt and condoning brutality despite being an obvious immorality, leading to expulsion. After the incident, Hyun-soo and his father are visiting the hospital where Jong-hoon is hospitalized, brutally injured by the fight earlier, along with his mother. The father sincerely apologizes to her; seeing the error of his ways admitting that his brutal methods of parenting upon his son didn't do any good. Upon returning home however, he berates Hyun-soo even further that he truly is a surplus man after all and that's all he'll ever be, and that he'll never be anything in the world, and brutalizes him even more than ever (smashing glass bottles on his head, kicking him in the face repeatedly, etc.), revealing, unsurprisingly, that he manipulated Jong-hoon's mother into thinking he's not the cruel and sadistic father Hyun-soo has put up with and been brutalized by his entire childhood. Hyun-soo now has no family or future since his now former father disowned him permanently, even with his expertise in Jeet Kune Do, and the movie ends with him jumping off the same rooftop he failed a suicide before.

Cast

References

External links

• Once Upon a Time in High School at the Korean Movie Database
• Once Upon a Time in High School at the Internet Movie Database
• Once Upon a Time in High School at HanCinema
• Once Upon a Time in High School at AllMovie
• Once Upon a Time in High School at Rotten Tomatoes