Spiritwalker (2020, Yoon Jae-geun)

I was expecting Spiritwalker’s MacGuffin to disappoint, but I wasn’t expecting it to completely derail the film. Spiritwalker is a high-concept action thriller about an amnesiac, Yoon Kye-sang, who discovers he is quantum leaping from person-to-person every twelve hours. He also has a very particular set of skills. Those skills come in handy because everyone he jumps into is some kind of underworld figure. Yoon’s got vague memories of his life before—something about a woman, Lim Ji-Yeon, of course—and his only friend is Park Ji-hwan.

Park’s character is an unhoused person who happens upon Yoon in a car accident and calls it in (while searching the car for loose items). He’s also the most uncomplicated fun Spiritwalker ever gets to have, with lots of comic reactions to discovering Yoon in a new body. Yoon mostly plays the part every time, with reflections and camera footage showing the actual person he’s possessed. After the MacGuffin reveal, Spiritwalker makes several bad moves, but the worst is Park mostly disappearing from the movie, followed by director Yoon Jae-geun not using Yoon enough. It wouldn’t end up mattering—the third act is a CGI composited action ballet bloodbath–but after a whole movie creating his character, director Yoon shafts actor Yoon.

There are some other big problems in the post-MacGuffin film, as well, like Spiritwalker deciding the criminal underworld also needs a covert espionage agency subplot tacked on and then final boss Park Yong-woo having a pointless drug addiction bit. The movie runs an hour and fifty-ish minutes and could easily lose ten from the third act. There’s lots of needless activity just to drag it out, which makes sense since the MacGuffin’s so bad.

Approximately the first half of Spiritwalker is a sort of neo-noir. Yoon is working his way through this criminal organization, jumping from crook to crook and trying to remember what’s going on. Sidekick Park can only help so much, and since all of the people Yoon’s inhabiting are dangerous criminals, no one really wants to exposition dump with him. Especially not Lim, who thinks he’s a bad guy (obviously).

The amnesia and identity crisis mix works, especially since director Yoon never tries too hard with the action. All of actor Yoon’s “particular skill” scenes surprise him, which makes the scenes more entertaining and sympathetic. The reveal on the quantum leaping will be both bad and insipid, but—again—what happens after is even worse. As a thriller director, Yoon’s solid. As an action director? Not so much. His composition for the third act is always off and always predictable. He goes through the same setups over and over. All of Spiritwalker’s technical pay-off comes in the early second act; the rest is a visual bore.

Until the script literally abandons him, actor Yoon’s a good lead. He does the confused quantum leaper thing well, though it might not be a compliment. He’s best at being bewildered without character development. Lim’s fine as the not femme fatale who inexplicably has a similar particular set of skills. That late second act reveal of the espionage agency’s involvement pays zero dividends and trades ostensible coherence for personality. Suddenly, director Yoon wants to be making a John Wick or something, complete with level bosses; Lim gets lost in it all.

Park Ji-hwan is good and fun as the sidekick. Park Yong-woo is fantastic as the big boss; it’s an exceptionally thin part, but Park devours enough scenery to plump it up.

The rest of the supporting cast is solid without being distinct.

Spiritwalker’s only ever going to be able to go so far on its concept, but it should’ve been able to go farther than it gets. It’s never bad and is rather compelling until the loud, yawner of a third act, but it’s a definite bummer.

Seobok (2021, Lee Yong-ju)

The first act of Seobok is an espionage thriller (or the first act of one), the second act is a buddy action road picture, the third act is a Sturm und Drang superhero movie. Well, superhuman movie, at least.

The best part is the second act when spy-who-tried-to-get-out-but-they-pull-him-back-in Gong Yoo is teaching new charge Park Bo-gum the ropes of the world. Park is the world’s first cloned human, except the scientists couldn’t resist genetically engineering him a bit, so he’s also got a decent set of mutant powers. Telekinesis mostly, which looks exactly like Magneto’s powers in a fight scene.

Despite only being ten years old, Park looks twice the age. And we find out there are reasons he’s more verbose and intellectually capable than a tween. He’s awkward, constantly asking Gong questions with the Five Ws. Treacherous action scenes will fully pause so Park can ask Gong why he’s phrasing a statement a certain way. It’s not quite comic relief, but it does make for some amusing interchanges between the pair as they bond.

Gong only took the job—from former boss, Jo Woo-jin—for selfish reasons, which he’s happy to tell Park about, then surprised when Park gets upset about it. Even though all of Park’s mortality lessons have come from “mom” Jang Young-nam, the lead scientist on his project. Her chief sidekick is Park Byeong-eun, who’s kind of a wiener, but is also Gong’s point of contact in the lab. So when it comes time to show off Park Bo-gum’s superpowers, Jang gets him to demonstrate, while Park Byeong-eun tells Gong what they’re seeing.

Also involved with the cloning company is owner Kim Jae-gun, who doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie, despite having a bunch to do in the third act.

The spy stuff is okay—Jo Yeong-wook’s music covers for there not being a lot of story with it, just mood and intensity. Gong and Jo have some history, which we find out about during one of the flashbacks, and their relationship bristles just enough without the details. Especially with the music. Music’s awesome.

The flashbacks are not a particularly successful device. As something happens in the present action, the movie cuts to a pertinent flashback. Sometimes Gong is telling Park a story, sometimes Park is telling Gong, but writer and director Lee skips over giving the actors the chance to act out those moments, instead going full into flashback. There are no rules; there are other flashbacks just for viewer edification. The scenes themselves are usually compelling because Lee tries hard with them; even the worst flashbacks are well-directed sequences. But there are also some well-acted ones, particularly by Jang and Park, whose “mother and son” relationship only exists in those flashbacks.

Seobok opens with one American actor, Paul Battle, not getting any lines, just emoting and being assassinated well, which made it seem like the film would avoid bad American performances. The plot involves the South Korean National Intelligence Service working with the CIA, so more Americans seem inevitable, but it’s a long time until Andrea Paciotto shows up for a terrible monologue. Paciotto’s real bad. But predictable.

Lee Mo-gae’s photography is quite good; again, the scenes where Gong’s introducing Park to the world are the best, not just for actors, but the lighting as well. The world from Park’s perspective has a lot of personality.

Given all the narrative constraints and contrivances, Seobok starts forecasting likely resolutions before the halfway point. But the ending’s worse than it needs to be. Lee goes for visually impressive bombastic instead of anything character motivated, which was where the film got its momentum.

Despite having little to do in the third act, Gong’s a great lead. It’s a movie star-type role, and he excels. Park’s successfully essays the film’s most challenging part. Jang’s pretty good; her performance suffers because she’s barely in the movie. Sidekick Park Byeong-eun’s in it slightly more, and he’s good. Ditto Jo. Most of Seobok’s acting is solid.

There’s just not much acting to do in the third act when the VFX take over. The end’s inevitable by the third act and obliviously so, which turns it into a race against time. Is the film going to make it to the finish before its charm runs out?

It makes it. Barely. And leveraging a lot of that earlier momentum. Then the postscript’s okay, with good Jo music making it all more palatable.

Thanks to Gong and Park and their buddy action road movie, Seobok’s got a lot of good moments. They add up to a mostly entertaining, occasionally too wanting, genre mishmash.

Escape from Mogadishu (2021, Ryoo Seung-wan)

Escape from Mogadishu is almost incalculably problematic. I can't do the math, and I'm sure there's a bunch I don't even see, but it's a doozy. It's a South Korean "inspired by a true story" about the Somali Civil War, specifically the South Korean diplomats and the North Korean diplomats working together to get out. It's done in the style of a Hollywood bureaucrats in danger thriller, which bakes in a gaggle of new problems. Including showcasing African poverty for first-world consumption–it's a white man's burden picture, only it's not about the white men. Instead, it's about Koreans doing a riff on it, trying to benefit from the behavior. Only for different reasons—South Korea and North Korea need African nations to sign off on them joining the U.N., so the first act contains wacky bureaucrat comedy. Just with guns, violence, and racism.

Then there's the stuff about religion, including the allied but foolishly corrupt Somali government apparently being secular and the rebels being Muslim. The insurgents care about their children; the government bureaucrats and thugs don't even care about each other. Plus, there's static between the South Korean Christian evangelical and the Buddhists. Further complicating, the evangelical (Kim So-jin) is the wife of the ambassador, Kim Yoon-seok, and is using that unofficial position to force her religion on them.

Then all the stuff with the North Koreans and the South Koreans. The film humanizes the North Koreans—callous, jingoist bigotry is left to the dueling intelligence officers, Jo In-sung and Koo Kyo-hwan. Koo's a diehard Communist; Jo's a diehard asshole. Jo's never in it for capitalist ideology; he always just wants someone to shit on. Starting with the native Somalis (while Koo brings care packages to outcast school children). But Koo also likes pranking the South Korean embassy, something his boss, Huh Joon-ho, finds amusing. Especially since he's been a diplomat for twenty years or something and Kim Yoon-seok's just there on temporary assignment.

There's a lot of back and forth with the two sets of people learning they're just people, with some well-timed reveals about the shitty police state the North Koreans all live in. Of course, some South Korean bureaucrats are shitty people too, but not all of them. It's a mess.

It's also extremely well-made and mostly well-acted. The good performances make up for the middling ones, which is really just Jo, but he's always around, consistently middling, and always an asshole. He does get a good fight scene, though it does work to call back to an opening scene observing since Africans make racially uninformed observations about Koreans, can't Koreans really do the same?

However, the last thirty minutes are mostly phenomenally directed "real people in danger" action thriller. Director Ryoo, editor Lee Gang-hee, and cinematographer Choi Young-hwan turn in a truly harrowing sequence. At some point in the first half of Escape, I thought the movie's goal was to have a quote where someone calls it "harrowing." I never thought it'd get there, but it does. The harrowing caravan escape sequence is harrowing. It even brings the film higher than it finishes; Ryoo and co-writer Lee Ki-cheol can't resist getting cheap digs in at the North Koreans and then some macho character development.

Huh's performance is phenomenal. Kim Yoon-seok's very good, but he's mainly opposite Jo, who's never good. Or they're doing a comedy bit with Jeong Man-sik, who plays the incompetent career bureaucrat trope. Koo's okay as the North Korean spy guy, but it's a caricature part and corresponding performance.

The first half is a long slog. The second half is over too soon. But it's definitely far below "it's the best they could do regarding a complex situation." Escape's confrontational and proud of its bric-a-brac politics, which never serve the characters, just the film. It's intentionally craven. So whether or not the multiple hurdles, pitfalls, and just plain ugliness are worth getting through the rest for that great Escape sequence depends on the individual viewer.

Deliver Us from Evil (2020, Hong Won-Chan)

The evil in Deliver Us from Evil is specifically Lee Jung-jae’s sadistic villain but generally the entire world of the film, which features drug kingpins, child kidnapping, government assassins turned hitmen, human traffickers, real estate swindlers, organ thieves, and crooked cops. At one point the film gets super-judgy about Park Jeong-min’s cabaret singer complaining about being surrounded by all the, well, Evil. Of course, since she’s a trans woman (actor Park, however, is not; he’s a cis male actor, which is just as shitty a move in a South Korean film as an American), it’s somehow supposed to be her fault. Meanwhile, all the dudes roaming around butchering people, kidnapping kids, and so on… well, it’s just the way it is for them. There’s something more wrong about Park, who’s run off to Thailand because she’s ashamed of being trans and having abandoned a young son back home in Korea.

I’m assuming the source dialogue has all the misgendering (the subtitles sure do), as the film uses Park as a showpiece for various people to discriminate against. It’s a messed up part and Park does all right, but it’s the most exploitative thing in writer and director Hong’s film, which is about kidnapping children and harvesting their organs based for xenophobes. In fact, Hong terrorizes Park’s character onscreen to get out of having to terrorize the trafficked children onscreen. The narrative needlessly tracks Park through a terrified night in jail to the morning where three cops threaten her for information, leveraging her marginalized status as an injury vector. And Hong drags it out to the point I was expecting “hero” Hwang Jung-min to somehow rescue Park from the crooked cops, but, no, it’s just more opportunities to be shitty to Park and terrorize her for sympathy. Except not exactly because Hwang’s super shitty to her too. It’s a garbage move, made even more so when Hong reveals Park to be the only truly sympathetic character in the whole movie (well, adult; well, adult who isn’t a fridged woman).

Of course, there’s an added “(South Korean) Oscar bait” aspect to Park’s performance, which makes it all the more shallow and all the more craven. It’s incredibly insincere, callous, and often mean-spirited.

Hong often tries to veer Evil away from the true meanness he’s setting on film through the outlandish characters. Calling the characters in Evil caricatures is a little too complimentary; they’re cartoonish. Often viciously cartoonish, but cartoonish. Lee’s a terrifying psychopathic supervillain who literally chops his way through crowds of people to get at his target—Hwang, who unknowingly killed Lee’s brother. Hwang spends the first act of the film, outside the hitman sequences, moping around Japan. He’s an ex-pat from South Korea who used to be a happy, well-adjusted government assassin; a bunch of non-murderous people came to power and decided they should stop killing people and disbanded Hwang’s outfit so he had to run to Japan. Where he keeps doing one last job until he can go live on a beach in Panama. Then he’ll be happy.

Except after Hwang does his last hit… someone kidnaps his previously unknown daughter Park So-yi over in Thailand, where she’s been happily living with naive mom Choi Hee-seo. Notice how much the plot hinges on previously unknown characters (Park, Lee) coming to the fore as inciting actions–Hong doesn’t really have a story, he’s got a hero (Hwang) and a villain (Lee) and various set pieces where they interact.

Both Hwang and Lee are capable of infinite violence—at one point someone injuries seem to supernaturally heal because he’s needed for the next action sequence, which involves chasing a car on foot while suffering multiple stab wounds; the leads chop through a legion of fake shemps, having both run afoul of the local crime lords in Thailand on their arrival, invincible until they have their inevitable showdown. Only Hwang’s not in the movie for an inevitable showdown with Lee, he’s in the movie to rescue daughter Park. Hong loses sight of the main plot, too wrapped up in the pretty good grisly action sequences. There are no heroics in Evil, just bloody action scenes—lots and lots of knives; it’s a third act problem because the film sets Hwang up as a tactical genius while Lee’s the bull stabbing everything in the china shop.

Hong does a great job directing Evil, Hong Kyung-pyo’s photography is excellent, ditto Kim Hyung-ju’s editing, and Hwang’s performance is outstanding the lead. Lee’s good but he’s just doing an unstoppable, unpredictable bad guy thing. It’s like an audition reel for another Joker movie or something. The different tones in the adversaries is usually a plus; it craps out at the end, when Hong turns out to have no organic way to bring them together and has to gin one up; Hong gets through thanks to his directing and his crew.

It’d be nice if Deliver Us from Evil’s biggest problem were just the third act, or just the title, instead of the transphobia and xenophobia. I didn’t even get to the xenophobia but basically the film portrays Thailand as a shithole country full stop. For a transphobic, xenophobic, exploitative revenge and avenge thriller, Evil’s about as good you can get. It’d be nice if it didn’t come with so many gross caveats.

Space Sweepers (2021, Jo Sung-hee)

Space Sweepers is a special effects spectacular. Director Jo keeps up the pace during the CGI space battles, but always takes the time to be excited at how the scene plays. The film’s set in a post-climate change future where all the rich people live on a giant satellite (with Richard Armitage as the “casting we could afford” evil CEO with multiple evil secrets and a very bad James Earl Jones voice impression at one point) and all the poor people live on a rotting Earth while working for the rich people somehow.

The heroes of the film are a group of… you guessed it… Space Sweepers. Interplanetary contract garbage services. All the satellites and space docks and assorted garbage the human race pollutes space with, these scrappy independents clean it all up and get paid barely enough to eat on. Sweepers is very matter-of-fact with its class politics; never cynical (heck, they think it’ll be 2092 before climate change calamities hit, which means South Koreans lie to themselves about climate change too).

The protagonist is Song Joong-ki, a former child soldier (for Armitage’s company), who gets a heart when he discovers humans are little and cute at some point and adopts a baby he’s just orphaned. Tragedy strikes—it takes a while to find out the specifics because Jo’s script loves only somewhat effective expository flashbacks—and he’s trying to earn enough money to find her little dead body in orbit before she crashes into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The technology exists to do it immediately but only if you’re rich.

It’s a weird character motivation subplot and mostly just serves as an excuse for Song to do churlish, inhumane plot stimulators throughout the film. It’s kind of amazing how likable Song’s able to remain.

Especially since the other members of his crew are completely likable without obsession, pointless subplots.

The captain is Kim Tae-ri. It’s unclear why she’s the captain as she doesn’t pilot the ship or handle the money. It’s possible she arranges the jobs, but the work is just grabbing space debris before other junk collectors can find it. She also doesn’t do much leading. Regardless, Kim’s very sturdy and when she finally gets to kick ass—she too was a soldier for Armitage, though not a child one—it’s a great effects sequence.

The most fun crew member is either Jin Seon-kyu as the crime lord turned junker or Joo Hae-jin as a robot. It’s a motion capture and voice performance from Joo and while the voice acting is good, the special effects are what make the robot so impressive. Space Sweepers has outstanding special effects, both macro and micro, out in space with Jo’s homage to Star Wars space dogfights—but without lasers, since they’re grabbing space garbage—and inside with character moments for Joo. Actually, besides Song, Joo's got the biggest character arc.

But Jin, the former crime boss who turns out to be a big teddy bear when the crew happens upon renegade child android Park Ye-rin? Absolutely adorable.

The story has the crew having to protect Park from Armitage’s malicious plans, which will take them through various well-executed CGI set pieces as the dangers increase from all directions. Including Jong’s single-mindedness.

The cast’s incredibly appealing, with Jo getting excellent moments between each of them and Park, so it’s a breezy two hours and fifteen minutes. The English language (white people) cast, including Armitage, is fairly bad. The multi-ethnic future makes perfect sense and looks great, just Jo doesn’t know how to direct them. Or they don’t know how to act. The last hurdle to South Korean cinema—though, I don’t think any of Asian cinema’s ever really done it—is getting a decent performance from a white actor.

Armitage manages never to be campy enough to be amusing or good enough to be… good, which is a bummer and hurts the third act. But a lot hurts the third act and the epilogue is too short given the enthusiasm the film’s ginned up in the characters.

Hopefully they’ll do a sequel.

The Swordsman (2020, Choi Jae-hoon)

Many years ago, Val Kilmer talked about how the original Tombstone director got replaced and one of that guy’s crimes was making the actors wear accurate textiles, which doesn’t matter on film. You can have a lightweight poncho and it’ll look the same on screen.

Welp.

I don’t know if it’s the benefits of shooting in 8k or whatever, but even though The Swordsman is not a cheap movie, it looks like a cheap movie because you can tell the costumes are very modernly produced. It’s very distracting because it never stops. There’s always something else onscreen to wonder about. To be fair, of course, it’s not just the costumes. The movie looks so hyper-real the sets look like a renaissance faire; so if Korea has Joseon Faires… Swordsman looks like they filmed it on the off-season.

Some of that responsibility falls on cinematographer Son Won-ho, who shoots Swordsman way too flat. Director Choi is going for un-steady Steadicam for reality’s sake or whatever, but Son shoots it documentary-reality. Like, I would much rather watch the movie where pseudo-costar Jeong Man-sik figures out Mr. Big villain Joe Taslim is a comically bad actor and then Jeong talks about it in an interview segment, but unfortunately Swordsman is a historical action movie and Taslim’s supposed to be serious.

Even though he really adds to the Joseon Faire thing because he’s like if the owner had a talentless but good-looking enough kid who made a movie in the summer. Or winter. Whatever. Offseason. Oh, and for no reason at all brought along his white wife (Angelina Danilova). Everything except a couple times it appears Taslim laughs out-of-character with Taslim and Danilova (who, to be fair, isn’t in it much but is cringe whenever she’s around) is appallingly bad.

Swordsman runs an hour and forty. When Taslim shows up, it seems like he might just be a cameo.

Nope.

Half the movie is laughably bad thanks to Taslim. While the whole movie raises an eyebrow thanks to costumes and sets.

The other half of the movie, about former king’s guard Hyuk Jang now raising the dethroned and presumably decapitated king’s daughter, Kim Hyeon-soo, in hiding. She’s a teenager now and she wants to go into town to the mall or whatever and so Hyuk finally takes her. Oh, and Hyuk’s blind, which is entirely unimportant and just how they get him to town.

So Taslim’s dad is ruler of the Chinese Qing dynasty and they’re forcing the Koreans to give them their daughters so the Koreans have to buy them back or else. Swordsman never gets darker than when it’s fairly callous about the whole kidnapped women in cages being sent to China to be sex slaves. It’s arguably glib about it.

But Kim’s charming and Hyuk’s not bad, he just hasn’t done his returning hero arc yet so we don’t know if he’s going to be good as the Korean Zatoichi.

He’s middling?

The sword fight choreography is pretty good for a lot of Swordsman, just not like… the beginning or the ending.

For a while it seems like the film might be able to get over some of its problems for a satisfactory resolve—the second act gets good—but it does not. It’s a bummer.

Especially since everyone interesting disappears in the third act. Instead it’s Jeong not paying off in his extended cameo, lots of bad Taslim, lots of middling Hyuk, and a little bit less sword fighting than you’d want. They’re saving up for the disappointing final battle.

Gong Sang-ah is good in a small part as the shop owner of the Joseon Faire tchotchke shop who apparently wet-nursed Kim as a baby and is majorly into Hyuk. Lee Na-kyung is less good as the big city shop owner who gets duped into human trafficking because… I mean, she’s a woman and Choi’s script isn’t very good. Lots of bland misogyny.

There are also Taslim’s three goons who Hyuk has to fight his way through in the game. They look very silly because of the costuming and photography, but they’re still better than Taslim.

Having Taslim as the bottom really does make even the worst supporting performance a delight because it means the camera isn’t on Taslim.

So, lots of solid sword fighting action—even though it doesn’t seem like there will be—but nowhere near good enough to make up for the rest. And, lastly, if you do see The Swordsman, opt for a low resolution. It might help.

Not sure what would help with Taslim though. Maybe the dubbed version.”

The Call (2020, Lee Chung-hyun)

It’s unclear for a while but what The Call needs more than anything else is a great villain. It’s got its villains, starting with very bad mom Lee El, but she’s not great. She’s kind of one note too, with writer and director Lee cutting away from her when she’s going to be establishing the most character. The Call tries very hard to avoid getting too much into character development because it’s eventually going to be a thriller. It doesn’t start a thriller, it starts a weird mix of comedy, drama, and sci-fi, but it’s eventually going to shave off the laughs and dramatics and just be the thrills with sci-fi trappings.

As a director, Lee can do all the film’s tones—whether it’s Park Shin-hye and new friend Jun Jong-seo bonding over music and small talk or Jun getting temporary freedom (she’s got the very bad mom in Lee El) and going off to have a fun day trip to Seoul from she and Park’s more rural town. He can also do the harrowing thrills as Park’s mom, Kim Sung-ryung tries to escape a dangerous situation she’s found herself in without knowing. The last third of The Call isn’t real time, but it often feels like it, as we’re just watching Park wait for the next bad thing to happen.

Actually, we’re waiting for Park to get the next call. The Call‘s always all about the next time the phone rings.

The film starts with Park getting home to check on mom Kim as she heads into surgery. She’s staying alone in their big house and she’s left her phone on the train. She digs out an old landline portable phone and after the bad samaritan who found her phone trying to shake her down—which seems like it’s going to be a bigger subplot than it turns out to be—she gets a wrong number call from Jun. Jun’s terrified of mom Lee El, trying to get ahold of local shop-owning pal Jo Kyung-sook but gets Park instead.

It takes a while for the friendship to develop—initially juxtaposed with Park and Kim, then Park alone in the house and discovering some mysteries—but eventually they get to be phone buddies.

And the way Lee’s script leverages some obvious discussion topics, it should’ve been clear he wasn’t going anywhere with anything like character development. Especially after the supporting cast expands to include Park Ho-san, who’s got plenty of presence, but absolutely no character. Same goes for Oh Jeong-se as the neighborhood strawberry farmer, who’s friends with Park and has the potential for an interesting relationship with Jun, but it needs to be a thriller and so Lee rushes quite a bit, racing to the third act.

The Call’s third act, which is all about its twists and turns—in fact, so’s the shrug of an epilogue—is perfectly solid thriller stuff and the characters are incredibly sympathetic, but they’re only sympathetic because of the exceptional, insurmountable dangers they face. Not to mention child in danger stuff. Big time child in danger stuff. And Lee seems to know it’s too much and visually avoids it while doing all sorts of implying.

Most of the film’s action takes place at Park’s house. For a while it seems like a budgetary constraint, but then Lee takes the action to Seoul with Jun but then opens things up more with Park getting out too. Despite it being an effective thriller, Lee’s direction is best when it’s not playing thriller. There are so many constraints on the thriller stuff, which is all very intricately plotted, Lee just figuring out how to play the audience not tell a story.

The Call’s better when it’s got a story to tell and not just a puzzle to solve.

Park’s fine; she’s very sympathetic. Jun starts better than she finishes; the movie stops asking her to do different things and instead the same thing over and over just with different clothing choices and accessories. Kim’s good. Lee El’s fine. She’s kind of one note but it’s the part.

There are some questionable music choices but they’re intentionally going for a late nineties vibe at times so it’s not inappropriate just not great. Lee’s choices all make sense, they just could be better while still making sense.

The Call’s an effective, inventive—though maybe not imaginative—thriller.

Though the epilogue is pointlessly too much. It’s kind of a cop out, showing how easy it is to manipulate expectations but without any actual payoff because the movie’s over.

But, again, The Call definitely engages as it plays.

Peninsula (2020, Yeon Sang-ho)

Peninsula is the sequel to Train to Busan but more like it just takes place in the same universe. It’s part of the Train to Busan Extended Universe, much like Land of the Dead would’ve been part of the Night of the Living Dead Extended Universe. And watching Peninsula, you realize just how much it helped having the good actors in the first one and the whole “zombies on a train” thing going because without the train and without Ma Dong-seok? Writer and director Yeon doesn’t so much flounder as flap uncontrollably. Peninsula is a hodgepodge of borrowed ideas—okay, what if it’s a heist movie but also Escape from New York but also Land of the Dead but also Fury Road but also Fast & Furious.

And Jurassic Park III, can’t forget Jurassic Park III.

The only thing impressive about Yeon’s script is how quickly he moves from one ripped off item to another.

But the film isn’t really anything “with zombies” because there aren’t a lot of zombies. Most of the movie is exceptionally ineffective lead Gang Dong-won trying to rescue his brother-in-law (Kim Do-yoon, who fails to be sympathetic in his helplessness and is just annoying) from crazed Army sergeant Kim Min-jae. Kim works for Koo Gyo-hwan (who’s playing one of those slimy officers who doesn’t know what’s really going on with his men, which sadly doesn’t turn out to be a Good, the Bad, and the Ugly reference because it would’ve been a good reference and the film doesn’t do those). They were supposed to be rescuing people but then the world quarantined the Korean Peninsula–Peninsula, get it—abandoning not just the stranded military and Korean citizens, but countless zombies as well.

The zombies aren’t really important.

They run. It’s important they run. But they’re not important. Kim’s important. Koo’s important. Now, both Kim and Koo give bad performances—actually it’s possible Kim’s performance is fine but his terrible mullet wig is ruining things. Lots of bad wigs in Peninsula. Lots of bad technicals, unfortunately.

The last twenty-five minutes of the movie, which manages to have multiple terrible endings, all of them protracted, also has some rather godawful CGI car chasing a la a Fast & Furious mockbuster. Gang’s teamed up with badass survivor woman Lee Jung-hyun, who’s got two adorable and badass zombie-killer daughters, tween Lee Re and, you know, nine year-old Lee Ye-won. The big drive-out at the end has Lee Re driving one car, Gang in another, and Kim and the bad guys in pursuit. The special effects are ambitious in it’s a bold move to try to do the kind of composites Yeon executes without a lot of budget. Ambition aside, it’s a complete fail, with the CGI so limited there aren’t even figures driving the cars during the exterior shots.

And it’s boring.

Peninsula is a boring, grim-dark action movie without any likable characters, at best mediocre performances (Lee Jung-hyun and the daughters are fine, like… the kids are cute and it’s believable Mom’s not putting up with Gang’s bullshit). The more interesting movie is what happened to them before they met Gang and Kim, but whatever. Nothing is the interesting choice in Peninsula.

Not even when Yeon apparently gives Gang an unlimited ammo cheat code, which just makes you wonder why Gang will occasionally stop shooting the (rarely) approaching zombies at dramatic moments but have thirty rounds for the next thirty zombies to get to the next set piece, which will be from an entirely different movie.

It could be worse, sure, but it’s pretty bad. Bad enough I’m surprised it’s from the same filmmaker as the original. If you’re going to do a sellout sequel, at least be do it entertainingly. And with the right CGI ambitions for your budget.

House of Hummingbird (2018, Kim Bora)

Eun-hee (Park Ji-hu) is an average Seoul eighth grader circa 1994, which would be fine if being average weren’t a one-way ticket to nowhere. Park’s the youngest of three children; while presumably eldest sister Park Soo-yeon has already screwed up and is going to a crappy school across the bridge, son Son Sang-yeon is doing great. Studies hard, works hard; sure, he regularly beats the crap out of Park, but it’s actually just one of the things making her average. At least Son doesn’t hit her in the face—Park’s best friend, Park Seo-yoon, gets hit in the face and has to hide it.

The only thing Park’s got going for her at the start of the film is boyfriend Jung Yoon-seo. Except working class Park isn’t supposed to have a boyfriend. She’s not supposed to karaoke either. She also smokes. Her classmates think she’s a troublemaker and her parents—well, mom Lee Seung-yeon is worried about it. Dad Jung In-gi has long since decided all the hopes and dreams are on Son. Though we find out in the first act, when mom’s drunken brother Hyung Young-seon shows up and establishes she had the smarts as a kid and Hyung screwed it up for both of them as it turned out.

This visit from Hyung is one of the inciting actions. It kicks off the sibling comparison subplot—theme, theme seems more appropriate—while Park goes through her routines until something else interesting happens. She gets a new Chinese teacher. Instead of a boring straight-edge guy, it’s cigarette smoking—out the stairwell window no less—Kim Sae-byuk. Thanks to some drama in Park’s friendship with Park Seo-yoon, she unexpectedly has the opportunity to bond with follow flounderer Kim. Of course, Kim’s at least ten years older—or more, she’s on an extension of an already extended break from university—and she’s had some time to think about how damaging reality can be on eighth grade girls.

Except reality also doesn’t let Kim intervene. There’s this frangible quality to Kim and Park’s relationship and their scenes are probably the film’s best in terms of character development. The limited character development is generally fine—Park’s like fourteen, right? It’s a character study in how it’s studying how her character develops.

Because it’s a big year for Park. Six major events. Seven if you could a first kiss. One of them is national news and presumably the point of the precise 1994 setting. No spoilers but… turns out House is going to have deus ex machinas to its deus ex machinas. Kim’s script stays fairly loose given how much it’s got to lead the narrative–House’s lyricism is in Kim’s direction and maybe what the script skips, not the script itself. The story—in an epical sense—is anticlimactic; thanks to Kim’s direction, the film instead gets to be passively climatic. Or at least significantly cumulative.

Park’s performance is good. Very strong performance. Not… singular. You keep waiting for Kim to throw something at her she obviously can’t handle. There’s something askew about the narrative distance, just a bit, and it ends up hurting more than helping. Because all it helps with is some narrative shortcuts—Kim maintains the same narrative distance throughout, even when it means dropping entire plot lines in addition to an indifference to the passage of time. They’re things you can cover with some nice direction and Kim indeed makes it up with nice direction. Kang Guk-hyun’s photography is good, Zoe Sua Cho’s editing is good.

Matija Strnisa’s music is fine. It never really sweeps when it needs to sweep. Sound is really important in the film only there’s no precision in the score… it always feels vaguely like stock music. Good stock music. But stock music.

Most of House of Hummingbird is really good. Until Kim gets to the third act and panics. It’s not one of those things where the deus ex machina is necessarily bad—or even the second one—but the work from the first to the second isn’t there. Kim employs this combination of a twist and a bait and switch; it doesn’t seem craven but it does seem cravenly pragmatic. The film’s pace slows down in the second act then speeds up so much in the third—when calling a scene a scene (versus, say, a snapshot) is a stretch—it feels like they needed another fifteen minutes.

Lots of House of Hummingbird is excellent and the way it showcases Park’s performance is at times just the right coming-of-age picture exquisite. But the finish is a mess of a mess of a mess of a mess.

Ashfall (2019, Kim Byung-seo and Lee Hae-jun)

I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to see Ashfall if it hadn’t been for a blogathon. Maybe never. While I’m a Ma Dong-seok fan because how can you not be, I’ve always been lukewarm on top-billed Lee Byung-hun. Lee’s not actually the lead; the lead is Ha Jung-woo, who I don’t follow. So, yeah… probably wouldn’t have seen Ashfall if I hadn’t specifically been looking for a disaster movie and also wanted to watch a (relatively) new South Korean movie.

So I’m glad I saw Ashfall, against the various odd. Writers and directors Kim Byung-seo and Lee Hae-jun don’t have many—or possibly any—original ideas in the film, which has a real-life volcano Baekdu Mountain erupting and threatening all life on the Korean Peninsula, North and South. Lee’s a North Korean double agent (or triple agent), it’s never clear. Possibly quadruple. Ma is a Korean-American scientist who finds himself drug into the government response because he’s the one who’s been trying to tell them the volcano is dangerous—I wonder if it’s the Korean equivalent of a Yellowstone “vulcanist”–for years. Ha is the Army bomb tech who’s got two days left on his compulsory military service. Ha’s a bit of an eccentric who can never remember his appointments with pregnant wife Suzy Bae, who doesn’t quite look sixteen years younger than Ha but definitely looks a little younger. They try to play it off with Ha being just immature but… he’s more like just unreliable. It’s unclear.

So the President (Choi Kwang-il very good in a small part) puts Jeon Hye-jin in charge of figuring out how to not go the way of Pompeii and she brings in Ma, who’s got a plan involving detonating nuclear warheads in a copper mine because Ma really likes Broken Arrow, but South Korea doesn’t have any nukes so they have to go steal some from North Korea even though they’re really friendly in this nearish, post-nuclear North Korea, but also pro-disarmament North Korea. Not important. What’s important is spy Lee knows where there are some nukes and they know where Lee’s at because he’s got a GPS tracker in him. The real Army is going in to extract him and go find some nukes, Ha’s team is there to get the nukes transferred into a special case to nuke the volcano.

It’s kind of a Lee and Ha buddy movie, also kind of not because they don’t have any common foes. Not really. The U.S. Army shows up to humiliate South Korea, which Lee finds really amusing, but they’re not really a plot impediment. They’re just something else the movie throws into the batter, albeit with a lot of overt subtexts. Robert Curtis Brown is actually find as the shitty American ambassador, which fooled me into thinking it wouldn’t be crappy American acting in a South Korean movie for the rest but then, of course, it was crappy American acting in a South Korean movie for the rest. Michael Ray is profoundly bad as the general. Though Jai Day could be worse as the guy on the ground.

So most of it’s just Lee and Ha being awful to one another while getting through “Mission: Impossible: Bomb Disposal Unit” with some earthquake stuff thrown in. There’s some great CGI disaster shots in Ashfall but there’s also a lot of bad directing during the disaster scenes too. Kim and Lee are far more successful combining narrative tropes than they are executing mix and match action set pieces. The first one, Ha in a car chase type sequence during the first earthquake, shows they clearly don’t have it cracked and nothing else in the film is ever any better. You eventually just have to give it a pass on that type of action because at least the visuals are interesting. Ashfall’s an odyssey. Lots of different locations and settings. And it often looks great—Kim Ji-yong’s photography, whoever does the CGI; Ashfall’s a fine looking film.

Well, except when it looks like Kim’s got the “soap opera mode” turned on and the artifice shines bright, which happens more in the second half than the first. The first has the most successful visual sequences. The second half is when it needs to have the action sequences….

Unfortunately, the directors just aren’t very good at directing action scenes. It would help immensely.

The acting’s all fine or better. Ma and Jeon have the worst parts of the top-billed but still give the best performances. The material’s so weak. It’s a wonder what they do with it. Lee’s good enough I’m going to have to give him another chance, but he’s also a lot better than Ha, which isn’t what the movie needs.

It’s too long by twenty minutes, but Ashfall’s more than a good enough action-spy-disaster movie.

This post is part of the “Disaster” Blog-A-Thon hosted by J-Dub of Dubsism and Quiggy of the Midnite Drive-In.