Shamo

A talented student named Ryo Narushima murders both of his parents in cold blood for no apparent reason. Too young to be tried as an adult, he's sent to a reformatory. Reviled even by the other inmates, he is beaten and raped with the tacit approval of the warden.

Salvation seems to come in the form of an imprisoned karate master who teaches Ryo to stand up for himself and fight back. After being released from prison Ryo—still hated by society for his crime—begins a new life as a vicious professional fighter.

After watching the director Soi Cheang's film Dog Bite Dog, I'd been very much looking forward to Shamo. What would he do with a martial arts movie?

Something similar but not as compelling.  It's probably not entirely accurate to call Shamo a martial arts movie, although it does have a lot of fight scenes in it. Shamo has certain things in common with Dog Bite Dog—themes of man being stripped down to animal nature and fighting for survival, but it lacks characters that are as interesting. There's nothing wrong with a spare storyline but you need something solid to hang it on.

Ryo's (Shawn Yue) reasons for killing his parents are not explained until the end, so you'll spend a lot of the movie wondering why he acts the way he does. Almost everyone in the movie despises him for what he's done and treats him badly.  Even his karate teacher (Francis Ng) treats him like he's subhuman.  It's not fun to watch. This is most likely the point of the movie; that Ryo is reaching down and fighting against the entire world to survive.

On top of nearly everyone Ryo interacting with being fairly nasty, it doesn't help that Ryo himself is an an extremely unpleasant person that isn't even admirable as an anti-hero. He's just a jerk that doesn't even treat the few friends he has well. It's unpleasant to watch him get torn down but with the way the story is presented it's also hard to empathize with him. If a little more time had been spent developing his character or telling his story towards the middle of the film, I might have liked it a lot more.

The visual style is great; I'd say it's the best part of the movie.  The cinematography is excellent.  There are a lot of beautiful artistic shots and great use of lighting and color.

The fights don't fare quite as well.  While there are some good fights the editing gets in the way at times. In some cases the excessive editing lends a sense of bone-crunching impact, but frequently it just obscures the action. This flaw is all too common in martial arts films these days.

I wouldn't recommend actively hunting Shamo down if you're a martial arts fan, but if you happen to run across it and you're in the mood for some dark martial arts action it's worth seeing.  If you're a fan of Soi Cheang it may be worth tracking down.