Tallinn Review: China Sea Delivers a Bleak, Kickboxing-Fueled Crime Drama

Osvald’s return home spirals into violence, guilt, and underworld ties in China Sea.

China Sea — Kickboxing ghosts, toxic loyalties, and a bruised heart in Jurgis Matulevičius’ global crime drama

It’s hard not to walk into China Sea without a little bias—especially if you’ve ever stepped foot inside a kickboxing gym, wrapped your hands, or lived that strange borderland between discipline and self-destruction. Director Jurgis Matulevičius taps into that exact frequency with startling precision, crafting a criminal-underworld character study that hits like a liver shot and aches like the bruises left the morning after. Written by Saulė Bliuvaitė, the film made its world premiere last night at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and it’s exactly the kind of global, multilingual bruiser that reminds you how universal pain, guilt, and redemption really are.

The center of that storm is Osvald, played with haunted intensity by Marius Repšys. A Lithuanian kickboxing champion who spent years fighting in the Far East, Osvald is a man split between two worlds: the grim, icy streets of his hometown and the Taiwanese community that once embraced him like family. When an impulsive, tragic mistake in a bar derails his fighting career—injuring an innocent woman—he’s booted from the federation. Any fighter knows what that means: you’re registered, you’re on record, you’re a weapon in the eyes of the state. One wrong move and the commissions will bury you.

So Osvald returns home, where every silence feels like punishment and every memory feels louder than the last. His one refuge is China Sea, a Taiwanese restaurant run by Ju-Long (played with understated warmth by Jag Huang), his grandmother, and sister. Osvald speaks the language. He eats the food. He feels human there. But this sanctuary, like everything else in his life, has shadows behind the kitchen door.

Everything shifts when Osvald meets Skaistė (the incredible Severija Janušauskaitė) in a court-ordered anger management group. Their connection is immediate, fragile, and messy—two wounded animals sniffing for escape routes. But their lives are far more entangled than either realizes. Her grief, his guilt, and the criminal currents swirling around China Sea crash together in ways neither can outrun.

China Sea plays like a late-night crime thriller in the tradition of 48 Hrs. or the grittier European noirs—less interested in flashy shootouts and more in the emotional shrapnel left behind by violence. What Matulevičius nails is the authenticity. The gym scenes feel lived-in. The fight culture is raw but not glamorized—this isn’t Hollywood training-montage nonsense. It’s the grind. The boredom. The bruised knuckles. The constant psychic tug between staying clean and slipping back into the underworld that’s always one handshake away.

There’s real criminal shit happening in this story, but the film never loses sight of the humans holding it all together: the lonely Taiwanese immigrants clinging to each other, the Lithuanian gangsters who aren’t villains so much as products of their environment, and Osvald—caught between two identities, two moral codes, two visions of the man he could become.

And then, of course, there’s Asbo, the dog—an absolute star who deserves his own line on the festival program.

Because of its Lithuanian-Taiwanese co-production roots, the film blends languages—Lithuanian, English, Taiwanese Hokkien, Mandarin—in a way that reinforces its themes of cultural displacement and fractured identities. It genuinely feels global, without ever losing the intimate, bruised-hearted core that keeps the story grounded.

If anything, China Sea could have easily stretched into a limited series; there’s that much world-building, that much plot simmering under the surface. But even as a tight feature, it packs the emotional punch of a heavyweight bout. The film’s real triumph is not its violence, but its tenderness—its belief that redemption is possible, but rarely clean, rarely easy, and rarely without blood on the floor.

With its world premiere at Tallinn Black Nights behind it, China Sea is now poised to become one of the most talked-about Baltic films of the year. And for fans of crime dramas, international thrillers, or combat-sports-adjacent storytelling, this is a must-watch whenever distribution news lands.

3.5 out of 5 from Horror Movies Uncut. A bruising, beautifully conflicted character study—with kickboxing soul and criminal swagger.