The Foot Fist Way is a 2008 low-budget comedy film directed by Jody Hill and starring Danny R. McBride. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company, Gary Sanchez Productions, picked up distribution rights to the film and hoped for it to achieve a Napoleon Dynamite-like success. It premiered in 2006 at The Los Angeles Film Festival and was screened at Sundance that same year.
Small town Tae Kwon Do instructor Fred Simmons relishes the power that comes from being the king of a small kingdom. A former champion, Mr. Simmons fancies himself one in the same as his hero, Chuck “The Truck” Wallace, a B-movie Martial Arts film star. Mr. Simmons openly boasts about his self-proclaimed status as “king of the demo” [Tae Kwon Do demonstration], even though he can’t nail one to save his life. His only vulnerability lies in his adoration of his wife Suzie – a weakness that comes bubbling to the surface when Mr. Simmons discovers Suzie has cheated on him with her new boss. When Suzie leaves him, Mr. Simmons finds himself slipping into a crushing downward spiral. He struggles to keep the power by abusing anyone who challenges him. After losing students and making a fool out of himself, he finds allies in Julio Chavez, his nine-year-old apprentice, and Henry Harrison, one of his students with an obvious confidence problem. When his bizarre best friend Mike McAllister comes to visit, the four make a pilgrimage to meet the greatest Martial Artist of all time, “The Truck,” at a Tae Kwon Do convention. What starts as a crazy man’s expedition to escape turns into a trip of discovery, as Mr. Simmons and his crew party with Chuck The Truck and Mr. Simmons convinces him to perform a demo at his Tae Kwon Do school during the upcoming belt-qualifying testing? Inspired with renewed strength, Fred returns from the convention clear-headed and at the top of his game, until he is shocked by an unexpected turn of events when Suzie returns home, and the Chuck The Truck flies in from Hollywood to appear at his Tae Kwon Do school. In the end, Mr. Simmons faces the greatest test of his power and finds the strength he outwardly projects within his own spirit.
Much of the humor in this film was rather dark. There was some slapstick humor but the true concept was to show the underbelly of small town under educated class. The dark humor is best represented when Fred jumps out behind a doorway with a large kitchen knife at his wife Suzie and yells “F**K You”. This was not a belly laugh scene and let to more of these types of comedic setups. Do not get me wrong there are some rather funny parts of this movie and some redeeming aspects to it. One of Fred’s students who obviously has low self-esteem is constantly being put down and pushed around does find his strength and show it when he defeats one of the other bully students in a demonstration that gets out of hand. In addition, both Fred and Chuck The Truck prove that Karma can sometimes come back to balance your life a little.
The movie was shot in only 19 days and they did a great job of putting it together. The overall quality of the film was right out of the Indy Film playbook, a rather crude lighting and film quality put together with weak to below par acting give the movie that cult film look. The cover of the box says “The best thing of its kind since NAPOLEON DYNAMITE”. I would have to say it was a let down compared to Napoleon Dynamite. There was a very human aspect to Napoleon Dynamite that made it a lovable film. This movie never gets there, it does show a part of the human experience, but it is not a side that people will connect with. Instead, it is the side of humanity that people tend to shy away from even though it may be true.
The Extras
It is easy to tell that this a low budget film by the fact that the extras do not really count, except for the alternative ending. It should have been the real ending. The behind the scenes has the Freshman Collage Art film look, which is lovely and disturbing at the same time. It is shot in hand held black and white with just an instrumental sound tract that is a dark space jam. Mostly it is out of focus, moves, and jumps way too much. In many ways, I did enjoy it much more than the film it took me back to my Art School Days when I studied video and had to suffer through hours and hours of bizarre films, that had little to no meaning, at least to everyone but the makers, but that was part of the fun.
The Fist Foot Way has it’s proper place in the Indy Film world and does present itself as a movie that has something to say. Although it is billed as a comedy, I believe that it has value as a study of a part of America that proves to the world that we are all just people and all have issues to deal with. It also shows that crap happens to even the toughest of us and it is sometimes harder to deal with than we wish for. It was an honest effort and deserves a chance.
ComicsOnline gives this movie 2 1/2 out of 5 spinning kicks.
