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A post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. A battle ground filled with ad hoc militias that demand total, unquestioning obedience from their members. The ruling class maintains the pretense of order, but beyond their peripheral vision, the only law is the law of the jungle.

Yep, that’s about how I remember high school.

Release
Fox - Korean version on one side, MTV dubbed version on the other side.

Starring
Jang Hyuk, Kim Soo-roh, Shin Min-ah, Kwon Sang-woo

In Brief

Kim Yung has been expelled from eight high schools. As hard as he tries to get along, the fact is, he is there, and therefore the other students must try to abuse him. When they do, Kim’s eel-derived thunder god chi powers come busting out Bruce Banner style, and people get shut down. Then, Kim gets the boot.

Volcano High is Kim’s last chance to graduate. He is uncommonly determined to avoid conflict with the other students. But, then, Volcano High is uncommonly volatile. A rumor has surfaced that the principal holds the Sacred Volume, and he who masters the volume shall gain the ability to be in harmonious unity with the cosmos while busting your ass into next Tuesday.

Jang Yang, captain of the weight lifting team, covets the Sacred Volume. With its power, he can put the smack down on Hakrim, the current top-ranked fighter in the school. With the aid of the jealous vice principal, Jang poisons the principal into a coma, and frames Hakrim for the crime. But the Sacred Volume is nowhere to be found.

Without Hakrim to keep order, the various athletic clubs do the natural thing: they go to war. Jang marches through the rugby club, the judo club, the field hockey club, and so on, opening a can of whup-ass on any who dare oppose him.

Frustrated at his inability to locate the Sacred Volume, the vice principal decides to bring order back to the school by calling in a team of mercenary substitute teachers. The substitutes follow Jang’s strategy in general, varying mainly in that they put Jang himself at the top of the list of people who need to get pummeled. And, of course, the substitutes have better chi powers.

The students turn to Kim to save them from tyranny with the eel-powers from his childhood. Kim is torn between his good sense telling him to keep his head down and graduate, and his desire to break all these clowns over his knee like kindling.

Volcano High is a quick-witted parody, using high school as a direct substitute for the Jiang Hu, the “underworld” of magical martial arts heroes and villains. The archtypical characters are all here, represented in school uniforms instead of scholar’s gowns. Extracurricular clubs take the place of competing martial arts schools. The action goes over the top like a field goal kicked off the roof of a space station. Even the CGI has the over-blown timbre of Tsui Hark’s Zu films.

Chi pasta!

Along with all of the pie-in-the-face self-mockery, Volcano delivers Jang Yang as a wonderful villain. He comes on with gigantic power, the mystique of a cult leader, and the cunning of a low-rent James Bond bad guy. We get a twist when Jang and his Dark Oxen weight lifting crew get down to the kendo team in their challenge roster, and Jang drops to his knees, professing his love for the team captain. Finally, when he is targeted by the substitutes, Jang joins his fellow students against the common enemy. The character is not being twisted for cheap plot contrivances; at every stage, we can see that Jang is motivated by his desire for respect and approval by his peers. His complexity is all delivered at a scream, though, keeping true to the flavor of the rest of the script.

Is this not what you expected?

Nice Shots
Kim playing it smooth with Jade.

She digs me.

Some nice fish-eye shots of the assistant principal menacing the students and his least favorite teachers.

Best Stunt(s)
Mr. Ma, boss of all substitutes, flicks a piece of chalk at a dozing student; the student tumbles back, taking out the next seat behind him, and the two students slam in to the back wall of the classroom. Excellent conception.

Disappointments
Some members of the kendo club, I suspect, are fairly new to the practice. Some of the shots of flailing shinai look ineffective in a way I do not think they were meant to.

I’m not sure what to make of the MTV version. At first, getting a group of rap stars to voice a martial arts comedy sounds like a proposition that absolutely cannot lose. The execution was mixed. The voice acting was excellent, reminding me of an old maxim that musicians make good voice actors; due to their strong awareness of rhythm, they are able to fit their dialog to the emotional beats and mouth movements on screen. On the other hand, the film was heavily edited. The story was re-composed, removing most of the Jiang Hu parallel, and telling a more linear story about a supernaturally violent high school. If anything, the MTV version is more serious than the Korean original. On balance, I find the Korean version more entertaining, but must recommend that you see the MTV version as well, if for no other reason, because it is your best chance in life to see an orange-haired Korean rugby player belting out challenges in U.S. urban dialect.

“Come on wit’ it!”

Final Analysis
A damn fun show, but like any parody, it works best after you have seen some other films in the genre. Warm up for this with the Swordsman trilogy, and maybe Dragon Inn. Three and a half stars.

If You Like This
Stephen Chow’s Fight Back to School is the logical follow-up.

Death Trance should be in your ballpark.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Chop Socky, Movies, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.