Review | Knockout film review: Han Geng plays boxer seeking redemption in disappointing family melodrama

Uninspired storytelling is the biggest flaw in this tear-jerker that sees former champion Han connecting with his daughter and climbing back in the ring

The movie is at its best when our protagonist’s sweat and blood do the talking, rather than the film’s clumsy, sentimental plot

Reading Time:2 minutes

Han Geng (right) takes on his opponent in Knockout (category: IIB, Mandarin, English, Japanese), directed by Roy Chow and co-starring Vivian Wu and Cai Shuling.

Published: 8:00pm, 13 May 2020Updated: 7:27pm, 15 May 2020

2/5 stars

In Knockout, a former boxing champion newly released from prison bonds with a young girl, works as a janitor in a gym, and finally trains up to return to the ring for one last shot at redemption. If this reminds you of the Andy Lau film A Fighter’s Blues (2000), Nick Cheung’s Unbeatable (2013), or a dozen other movies in the tried-and-tested tradition, it’s because Knockout really is as generic as its English title suggests.

Indeed, the most unexpected aspect about this latest production by the husband-and-wife team of director Roy Chow Hin-yeung and screenwriter Christine To Chi-long may be just how uninspired its storytelling proves to be. (For audiences who have sought out their 2019 flop The Great Detective, released in China but still entirely unheard of in Hong Kong, the surprise may be more tempered.)

The duo earned their infamy with their first two films, the twist-heavy crime thrillers Murderer (2009) and Nightfall (2012), before making amends with the oddly underrated martial arts epic Rise of the Legend in 2014. But any faith that Chow and To may someday refine their narrative ambition into great cinema looks misplaced, now that they have come up with two derivative efforts in a row.

In Knockout, former K-pop idol Han Geng (also in The Great Detective) stars as Zhou Shi, a Shanghai professional boxer with a pregnant girlfriend. The protagonist is an undefeated IBF middleweight champion when he accidentally kills an opponent during a match, becomes embroiled in a deadly brawl with his opponent’s teammates afterwards, and lands himself a six-year prison sentence.

When he is discharged from prison, Zhou is devastated to learn that his girlfriend died in a car accident three months earlier, and their six-year-old daughter, Blithe (Cai Shuling), is in a foster centre. Unwilling to take up boxing, yet finding himself unemployable, Zhou works low-end jobs to make ends meet. It helps that the newly reunited father and daughter have swiftly become inseparable.

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