An unusual blend of thoughtful high-school drama with sporadic martial arts action, The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do: Once Upon a Time in High School is an intriguing feature from talented South Korean director Yoo Ha. As with Bong Joon-Ho's superb serial killer thriller Memories of Murder released just a short time earlier, Spirit transcends genre trappings by offering a clear-eyed look back to a dark time in Korea's recent past. While Yoo's film is far more nostalgic, that nostalgia is tinged with righteous anger over a fascistic mindset that, in the film, permeates every layer of Korean society, gobbling up and spitting out even the best and brightest of young people. The passive hero of the film, Hyun-soo (played with grace and sensitivity by Kwon Sang-woo), watches as the rebellious spirit of his friends, Hamburger (Park Hyo-jun) and Woo-sik (Lee Jung-jin), is beaten down and swallowed up by the petty hierarchies and capricious cruelties of life at his military-run high school. Betrayal falls upon betrayal with tragic plausibility, and after causing his former friend's downfall, Hamburger takes over entertaining the class with a lesser version of Woo-sik's Bruce Lee impression. In credit to Yoo Ha's meticulousness, Hamburger's impression of Lee is clearly that of a future Jackie Chan fan. The film is shot and performed with tremendous skill, and the brutal, believable fight sequences are expertly choreographed. Despite the appeal of the romantic leads, including the adorable Han Ga-in, the romantic triangle of the film rarely reaches the peaks of its high-school sequences. Overall the film offers an insightful look at the way abuses of power at the highest levels filter down through all layers of society.