Director Natasha Arthy's Fighter (2007) does an excellent job of merging the typical underdog martial arts movie with the depth and emotional weight of a good indie drama. Unlike the movie's formulaic fight movie peers, the piece is more story than action-driven. The film is well-written, well-acted, and produces a fresh overall experience even though the movie includes some well-tread subject matter.
Fighter's premise of a teenager whose passion for martial arts pushes her to go against the grain of her traditional Muslim family sounds simple enough. But I think people from other cultures would be surprised how her hobby causes deep and wide-ranging problems in her life.
Aicha (Semra Turan) is a teenager to a Muslim family in Copenhagen. Her traditional family expects her to go to medical school after graduating from high school and they frown upon her interest in kung fu. Furthermore, her family and the Muslim community look down on her kung fu club where men and women train together. Much of the movie shows Aicha struggling to live her secret life as a kung fu practitioner while not disappointing her family. Consequently, the film depicts a lot of running around Copenhagen and looking at clocks to see if she’s late for kung fu class.
Added into the mix is her brother’s arranged marriage. That has implications for the entire family, including an expected second marriage of Aicha to the other family's younger son. There's even a blossoming romance with a Danish student from her kung fu class. Thankfully, Fighter doesn't devolve into the typical forbidden love story. That particular story arc is important to the film, but doesn't overwhelm it. The dilemmas surrounding Aicha's failing school grades, the expectations of her family, and those of the community all begin to close in on her. Even with all of these external factors, Aicha keeps finding herself heading back to kung fu class.
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