NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

A_Different_Drummer Makes the Karate Kid look like Romper Room.Not a martial art movie as such, more of a coming of age film, but the reason it caught attention is that the fighting scenes are actually better than you would find in films that actually ARE fight films! Great direction, great acting. Great use of background and motion. The central character has many scenes where she is running seemingly without direction or purpose, a metaphor for the twists and turns in her life.Does a great job of showing western viewers the "other" side of the coin, what is like to come from a culture that limits expression rather than encourages it.Very engaging. Highly recommended.

ryansassy1 "What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."--Ecclesiastes 1:9So the most important question is, was it done well? I think that's a general Yes. And the second most important question is, does it pass the Bruce test? (i.e., both interesting ideas and good Kung Fu?) Again, Yes.The plot is lifted straight from Karate Kid, mixed in a little with Dragon, and reinterpreted with a Turkish teenaged girl as the lead-- not a problem for me. Hey, if the story is good, the actors are competent, and the fight scenes well-choreographed, then that's all I need from my martial arts dramas. But just to be clear, this film is primarily a drama, not an action movie, nor a true martial arts movie: the focus is mainly on the lead, her personal problems, and her relationships with family; the Kung Fu serves almost as a poetic metaphor for her inner struggles.Fighter's strengths: good cinematography, especially the fight scenes and the fantasy sequences; entertaining Kung Fu scenes; solid coming-of-age story; interesting exploration of culture clash between the Muslim immigrants and the native population of Sweden; sympathetic and charismatic lead actor Semra Turan in her debut role as Aicha--in fact, everybody in the cast was effective and believable.Fighter's weaknesses: genre confusion -- did it want to be fantasy or realism? because some pretty unrealistic fighting powers suddenly materialize in the middle of even the non-fantasy fight sequences (come on, she did a back flip over her *standing* opponent?); some questionable writing lapses, such as how did she pay for her elite new Kung Fu club, and why did her stodgy father even let her train in martial arts for 3 years in the first place?; an over-reliance on ready-made martial arts movie clichés such as the tournament held at night in some obscure "underground" venue, dramatically lit by flaming tin barrels. My eyes rolled more than once during that one.It's far from perfect -- nonetheless, Fighter was a heartfelt story which kept me engaged to the very end. Come to think of it, that reminds me of something else about this film that I liked very much; without giving away any details (I am determined that this review will need no spoiler alerts!), Fighter left a few side conflicts unresolved. The film didn't try to wrap up each and every story arc in a neat little bow. I believe this is intentional, because for a long time afterward the dangling story threads provoked me to consider the issues Fighter presented a little more deeply. Basically, this film respects the viewer enough to depart from the expected resolutions. I would have awarded it 7 stars, but that earned it one extra.I think Bruce would have approved.

ridmx When I went to watch this movie my expectations were really low, but I was pleasantly surprised. I thought I was going to watch a boring teen-flick, BUT in fact the plot is interesting and well executed, the acting was somewhat convincing - especially from Melville who really shows his talent in this movie, and the fight scenes were - for a low budget movie - very well done .I think this movie deserves a broader audience than it has received. It is a movie, which can be seen by the whole family - maybe not the smallest of kids, since it contains some rather rough scenes. A movie about love, and the problems that can occur, when you go against your family traditions. Yes, the movie is very much like "Bend it like Beckham", but I actually think this movie pulls it off better.

nekrosoma Despite positive reviews and screenings at the international festivals, this movie is not for everyone.The story is very similar to other movies, in which a teenage girl from the family of immigrants needs to overcome many common personal problems of her age, and also to struggle against the pressure of ethnic traditions in her family. She does that by choosing some kind of sport, and with the help of a local boy, that for some reason falls in love with her, she confronts her problems and wins.In Girlfight it's boxing, in Bend it like Beckham it's soccer, and now it's Kung Fu.But Fighter is much inferior product than these two, it was simply embarrassing to watch it. Semra Turan, the "actress" that playing the role of a teenage girl, maybe can do a lot of things, but one thing she can't do is to act. Her presence on the screen is anemic and clumsy, the dramatic situations, in which she tries to show some emotions, are dreadful, her body and facial language are of amateur actress, badly instructed by the director. The rest of the cast is a little better, but they just cannot save this cliché movie with stereotypical characters and shallow plot. Besides a few relatively good moments this movie has nothing new or interesting to offer.Even the kung fu fighting is not a reason to watch this, it's just so boring. The slow motion was really unnecessary, the choreography was basic and lacked the inspiration, and most of the kung fu scenes are just training or standing in all kind of kung fu positions, not actually fighting. Not to mention how ridiculous it looks when a small and skinny girl fights big and muscular boys, and knocks them off their feet. The only reason this movie has been noticed at all is because it's European. It's very easy to publicize this movie - A first martial arts film from Denmark, but don't be fooled, it's not. It's just a drama about stupid teenage girl and her problems, which are, by the way, not really convincing.Bad movie with embarrassing lines, acting and story.