Prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To’s charming 2004 Throw Down centers on three misfits: Szeto Bo (Louis Koo), a former judo star who is now an alcoholic club owner with perennial gambling debts; Tony (Aaron Kwok), a good-natured judo enthusiast who would love to fight Bo (and anyone else—Tony begins conversations with strangers with a smile and an invitation to fight); and pixie-ish Mona (Cherrie Ying), who dreams of breaking into show biz, and approaches Bo for a job in his club as a karaoke singer.
Initially ignoring the requests of his two new acquaintances, Bo enlists their aid in a mini-heist satchel-swapping ploy at a video game parlor in order to make a payoff deadline. Although initially successful, Bo quickly loses the money from the satchel at the gambling table and the three ersatz amigos are back at square one.
Later at the club, Bo is playing guitar, Tony is blowing sax, and Mona is singing onstage when three men at separate tables call the trio down to a) make Bo pay up, b) pressure Tony to fight, and c) encourage Mona to appear in adult films. The situations swiftly deteriorate into a slo-mo club-wide brawl in which tables are broken, beer flies, and a lot of dudes are literally thrown down in classic judo moves.
As Throw Down continues to follow the misadventures of the central trio, the narrative simply refuses to honor any kind of cinematic convention: no detailed backstories are presented, dialogue is minimal, romance is absent, and the ending is not exactly Karate Kid-like. What Throw Down offers instead is atmosphere (infectious optimism and deadpan comedy) and moments of pure cinematic joy, especially in a highly referential sequence in which the three principals build an ersatz cheerleader tower to free a red balloon from the branches of a tree.
An end title card dedicates the film to the “greatest” filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa, whose debut Sanshiro Sugata—judo-themed but vastly different in tone—is name-checked throughout Throw Down. While Throw Down features plenty of the titular moves—sometimes presented in borderline comic chains—it is at heart a story about friendship and hope, much of which plays out on the nighttime streets of Hong Kong, where splashes of neon color intermittently illuminate the darkness.
Presented with a fine 4K digital restoration, extras include a 2004 interview with director Johnnie To, new interviews (with co-screenwriter Yau Nai-hoi, composer Peter Kam, and film scholars David Bordwell and Caroline Guo), a 2004 “making-of” featurette, and a leaflet with an essay by film critic Sean Gilman. Recommended.