Tag: Lee Jung-jae

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.

Operation Chromite (2016, John H. Lee)

There’s no indication there’s a better movie anywhere in Operation Chromite. Director Lee just doesn’t have a handle on it. The script’s an uncomfortable mix of predictable and manipulative–director Lee and co-writer Lee Man-hee lay on the war movie jingoism so thick, it actually takes a while to realize Lee Beom-su’s giving a legitimately great performance as the North Korean bad guy. There’s too much crap going on with really questionable guest star Liam Neeson.

While the decent parts of Operation Chromite are a South Korean film with actors speaking Korean, there are these horrendous moments with Liam Neeson as General Douglas MacArthur. It’s a terrible performance, the kind you’d think Neeson would only give if he didn’t think the film would get a release in the United States. Sean Dulake did the dialogue for the English language scenes (he also appears as Neeson’s sidekick); it’s awful dialogue. You don’t have any respect for Neeson, but I did feel bad for Jon Gries, who shows up to have an awful expository dialogue argument. I hope Neeson bought something nice with his paycheck.

Worse–sort of–is the digital composites intended to convince the audience Neeson is filming with the rest of the cast. He’s clearly not, as the terrible composites betray. Chromite’s cinematography is weak to begin with, especially since they attempt to match the overblown lighting of the composite shots. As if Lee Dong-joon’s soulful but adventurous, rousing but melancholy music doesn’t slather on the vapid anti-Communism message enough–more on it in a second–with that overblown lighting and Neeson’s porky performance….

Neeson and Lee’s handling of his scenes, not to mention the crappy, manipulative resolution, sink Operation Chromite. Because even though it was a dumb, jingoistic action war thriller, it was a relatively fun one. Sure, whenever the movie tries to juxtapose Communist Lee Beom-su and ex-Communist Lee Jung-jae and their ideologies and whatever, it’s crap. But it’s crap whenever Neeson is around too so it’s a familiar experience. You just wait them out, because otherwise it’s sort of fun. None of the characters get enough attention but they’re at least likable performances, some of them good. Director Lee doesn’t know how to get a good performance–not in English, not in Korean–but he does recognize when he’s shooting one and gives his actors occasional space. The leads anyway.

If Operation Chromite were a completely different dumb, jingoistic action war thriller, with a different script, a different director, no Liam Neeson, but the same Korean cast and the same concept, it’d be better. With an excellent director–someone who knew how to make a war movie (since Chromite goes through various types of war movie sequences, haphazardly stuck together with CG), someone who knew how to balance a big cast–and a better script, the project might deserve the performances Lee Beom-su and Lee Jung-jae put into it.

Lee Beom-su’s evil little North Korean commander is a dangerous person. Even in the exaggerated scenes, Lee Beom-su brings something real to it. Everyone in Operation Chromite is a caricature (at best), but Lee Beom-su makes it feel like his character is pretending to be a caricature. Shame the script can’t keep up.

And Lee Jung-jae’s great as the soulful ex-Communist turned action hero. It’s not a deep role, but it’s got some details and Lee Jung-jae’s able to make it work. He’s got some excellent scenes in the film, even if his character’s way too thin.

The most disappointing thing is, after a rocky start, Operation Chromite gets better. The less Neeson, the better. Then he comes back. And down it all goes. But it’s not just him–it’s got a weak third act. Chromite is a mess with occasional smooth patches.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by John H. Lee; written by Sean Dulake, Lee Man-hee, and John H. Lee; edited by Steve M. Choe; music by Lee Dong-joon; produced by Chung Taewon; released by CJ Entertainment.

Starring Lee Jung-jae (Jang Hak-soo), Lee Beom-su (Lim Gye-jin), Jin Se-yeon (Han Jae-seon), Park Cheol-min (Nam Ki-seong), Kim Hee-jin (Ryu Jang-choon), and Liam Neeson (Douglas MacArthur).

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New World (2013, Park Hoon-jung)

It never occurred to me there might still be significant mileage in the undercover cop melodrama. Or, for that matter, in the gangster melodrama. New World proves me uninformed on both points. Writer-director Park mixes both genres, somewhat unequally, and creates this unbelievably good film.

I use the adjective “unbelievably” because, for the most part, Park isn’t doing anything new. Sure, it’s modern and set in Korea, but there’s a lot of gangster standards at play. He just remixes them perfectly–there are a couple new features, of course–and has an amazing cast act them out.

For about half the film, Lee Jung-jae’s the lead. But then it switches over to Hwang Jeong-min, who kind of runs off with the picture. A lot of it is him facing off against villain Park Seong-Woong. Watching these two makes one forget Lee’s even in the picture–much less Choi Min-sik as the cop out to take down the gangsters–but director Park is able to bring it all back together.

Park never gets particularly showy with the direction. Beautiful photography from Chung Chung-hoon too. They’re both very controlled, making World an exceedingly measured, precise picture.

It’s hard to say who gives the film’s best performance. It wouldn’t work without Lee’s quiet turn as the primary lead, but it also wouldn’t work without Hwang’s viciously affable performance. And Park Seong-Woong just oozes controlled evil.

New World takes a while to get there, but it’s revelatory.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Park Hoon-jung; director of photography, Chung Chung-hoon; edited by Nam Na-yeong and Moon Sae-kyung; music by Jo Yeong-wook; produced by Kim Woo-taek and Park Min-jung; released by Next Entertainment World.

Starring Lee Jung-jae (Lee Ja-sung), Hwang Jung-min (Jung Chung), Park Seong-woong (Lee Joong-goo), Choi Min-sik (Kang Hyung-chul), Song Ji-hyo (Shin Woo), Kim Yoon-seong (Seok-moo), Na Kwang-hoon (Yang Moon-seok), Park Seo-yeon- (Joo-kyung), Choi Il-hwa (Director Jang Su-gi), Jang Gwang (Director Yang), Kwon Tae-won (Director Park), Kim Hong-pa (Director Kim) and Ju Jin-mo (Police commissioner Go).

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The Thieves (2012, Choi Dong-hoon)

The Thieves doesn’t try to redefine the heist genre. Instead, it shows the genre’s possibilities. The film has the traditional flashbacks, double crosses, triple crosses and so on, but it also brings a tenderness. And it’s a sincere tenderness; the film resonates because of its characters, not its spectacles. However, director Choi does everything he can to make the film viewing experience spectacular. When the film achieves its singular successes, it’s because how of he mixes the ingredients.

There are a lot of characters in the film. Ten thieves and some (mostly) comic relief supporting cast. Choi opens establishing the Korean thieves–they team up with a Chinese crew for the heist–before moving into the film’s central heist. And it’s a central sequence. The Thieves is a never boring 136 minutes and the heist sequences come relatively early. Once it’s done, Choi then moves into the film’s most surprising turn. It becomes an urban adventure thriller. There’s some astounding sequences, which shouldn’t work because of tone, but Choi and his actors bind the everything together seamlessly.

There are showy performances–Kim Yun-seok, Lee Jung-jae and especially Oh Dal-su–and there are quiet performances– Kim Hye-su, Kim Soo-hyun and Simon Yam–and there are quiet performances masquerading as showy ones–Jun Ji-hyun and Kim Hae-suk. They quietly collide and create wonderful energy.

The Thieves isn’t perfect–Choi never finds the right way to end it–but it’s excellent and a lot of fun.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Choi Dong-hoon; written by Choi and Lee Gi-cheol; director of photography, Choi Yeong-hwan; edited by Shin Min-kyung; music by Jang Young-gyu; produced by Ahn Soo-hyun; released by Showbox.

Starring Kim Yun-seok (Macau Park), Lee Jung-jae (Popeye), Kim Hye-su (Pepsi), Jun Ji-hyun (Yanicall), Kim Hae-suk (Chewing Gum), Oh Dal-su (Andrew), Kim Soo-hyun (Jampano), Simon Yam (Chen), Angelica Lee (Julie), Tsang Kwok Cheung (Johnny), Ju Jin-mo (the chief inspector), Choi Deok-mun (the casino manager), Yee Soo-jung (Tiffany) and Shin Ha-kyun (the art gallery director).

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Il Mare (2000, Lee Hyun-seung)

In graduate school, one of my classmates (or is it colleagues in graduate school?) was having trouble figuring out how to convey the fantastic, but not do magical realism. Another of my classmates (colleagues) recommended she watch Field of Dreams. Everyone was a little thrown by the comment, including me, but then I realized it made perfect sense. Field of Dreams conveyed the fantastic and the magical, but free of genre (in that It’s a Wonderful Life manner).

Il Mare has the same success integrating the fantastic without letting the narrative get swept away by the fetishizing of that element. Boiled down, Il Mare‘s really just about a couple lonely people. Sometimes it’s about the two of them together, but in a lot of ways, it isn’t. It’s two separate–but criss-crossing–narratives, informing one another, affecting one another. The greatest successes come from the raw emotions in the scenes where the leads–Lee Jung-Jae and Jun Ji-hyun–are alone. Jun was only nineteen when Il Mare came out, so she could have been younger when it was filmed, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a young female actor do such fine dramatic work.

But the film, for the majority of it, belongs to Lee. He does a great job driving the film. His story features less establishing narrative than Jun’s–his melancholy is never really defined, but still has to be palpable for the film to work. Whereas Jun’s melancholy is defined and explored, she has to express a silent self-realization in the midst of a big narrative revelation. It’s really impressive to see her pull it off too, given just how melodramatic the scene could get.

Melodrama has an interesting place in Il Mare. At first glance, the film reeks of it–Lee Hyun-seung has some wonderful, emotive shots. Hong Kyung-pyo’s cinematography is strangely (for the content) free of high contrast sumptuousness; instead it’s matter of fact and still affects. The film’s loneliness theme works with those grayish skies. The music also plays toward the melodrama–Il Mare‘s music is nearly flawless (there are some bad vocal song choices, particularly an English one… sounding like something out of a mid-1980s TV movie). But even with those poor song choices, the music makes the film work. Il Mare makes an agreement with the viewer early on–through the music, the direction, the photography–and then kind of slips the fantastic in after he or she is already a willing participant.

This Il Mare viewing is my second. The first time, I judged the film’s conclusion rather harshly. To achieve its full potential, the film has to do one thing and it does not. It does something else instead. While it doesn’t break the experience, it’s an obvious thing it needed to do and I think it really pissed me off the first time through.

Il Mare is, on the first viewing, about experiencing the narrative (that initial agreement sort of forces the situation); my reaction was emotional and a tad juvenile. On this second viewing, well aware of the final misstep, I could appreciate a lot more. Jun’s performance, for example, really wowed me. But there are also a couple dozen exquisite sequences, which I was able to enjoy without concerning myself with their ramifications for the plot.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Lee Hyun-seung; written by Kim Eun-jeong and Yeo Ji-na; director of photography, Hong Kyung-pyo; edited by Lee Eun Soo; music by Kim Hyeon-cheol; produced by Cho Min-hwan; released by Sidus Pictures.

Starring Lee Jung-jae (Han Sung-hyun) and Jun Ji-hyun (Kim Eun-ju).

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Typhoon (2005, Kwak Kyung-taek)

Typhoon is the biggest budgeted South Korean film to date. The money’s well spent, as the film looks like any big budget film. If there are any massive amounts of CG, they’d be at the end, during the storm, which happens at night, making things a lot easier. However, the budget can’t fix any of Typhoon’s problems, since they’re all from the writer-director, Kwak Kyung-Taek, apparently thinks GoldenEye is the action movie template to follow. Had Typhoon just been a remake of GoldenEye in a Korean context, I wouldn’t have complained… because GoldenEye was at least stimulating. Typhoon takes the structure of GoldenEye and some other Bond films and removes all the wit, however forced, and replaces it with moroseness. Typhoon is a would-be heavy film, but it doesn’t even fail to be heavy, it’s just too fake.

The film’s soullessness is peculiar, because it’s almost unique. It’s not a dumb American action movie–though it tries at times and fails because Kwak cannot direct exciting scenes–and it doesn’t want to be (the heavy elements). It wants to be something in between and can’t make it, because Kwak’s script is awful. His characters are entirely flat and go through the exceptionally long two hour film with about enough depth for ten minutes. None of the actors have any fun. Jang Dong-Kun, as the bad guy, doesn’t have any flourishes or any real personality… except he really and truly cares for his men–oh, Kwak also really likes Heat, more on that “influence” later. I was excited to see Typhoon because Lee Jung-Jae’s in it and he’s not particularly prolific and I can truly say I’ve never seen a more bored performance. Lee’s character is the most shallow–imagine a not cocky Tom Cruise action hero–and Lee the actor’s so visibly disinterested, you wish he could just get killed off. The only scenes of interest involve Jang’s sister and then both he and Lee perk up a little. The scenes between the two of them, when Kwak pretends they’re alter egos, produce the film’s most eye-rolling moments. The rest of the time it’s boring, which might mean the eye-rolling scenes are actually more engaging–my first use of engaging as a pejorative.

Frighteningly, Typhoon did get me interested in seeing Martin Campbell’s upcoming Casino Royale, just because if I want to see a pseudo-heavy James Bond movie, I’ll see a pseudo-heavy James Bond movie. It’s also got me terrified of Kwak’s other films, as at least one of them is on my to-watch list.

An Affair (1998, Lee Je-yong)

After Asako in Ruby Shoes, I had high hopes for An Affair, Lee’s first film. Seeing one film, then going back and watching earlier films from the same director can be odd. You’re watching the blossoming in reverse. I’m trying to think of someone whose first films aren’t good. An Affair is good, it’s just not as good as Asako. It came really close to being… close to Asako, but Lee’s powerful visualization isn’t fully realized in An Affair. He has wonderful framing–there’s one particular scene, when the two people having the affair are walking along a lake and their motion pulls the camera… until the end the shot, they’re in control of the camera, not the director. The sound design is the most striking. Every one in the film works to create the mood. The music’s also important, but the sound design is more masterful. Everything hasn’t come together yet. He doesn’t understand just how important he make his shots.

More, however, the film’s problems come from the screenplay. For the first half of the film, the cuckold is poorly defined. He’s a successful architect… he works too much… blah blah blah. In the second half, of course, we learn he’s harboring deep feelings for a coworker (and has been for years) and suppresses them to keep his marriage together. He reacts to his suspicions in wonderful ways… ways the character in the first half wasn’t capable of realizing. The boyfriend, played by Lee Jung-Jae, who’s usually great, is an enigma for the first half of the film. It could have been a stalker movie during the seduction. Lee (the actor), in all of his other films, realizes these conflicted characters, and here he’s got his armed tied behind his back… (by Lee, the director). The film hides the character and his intentions from the audience, which is not a good thing to do.

Lee Mi-suk, the wife, gives the film’s best performance because it’s her film. She’s quiet and her performance is a perfect performance for (the director) Lee’s style–it synthesizes with the rest of An Affair. Lee Jung-Jae’s doesn’t (again, not all his fault), but it needed to do so. Together, however, the two leads are wonderful. They play very well off each other and, in the early scenes, the ominous air about the boyfriend begins to make one wary of the film. You can’t trust the film and a film like this one–(it’s long… it’s boring… it’s that good boring I love so much… it’s a lengthy 108 minutes)–you need to be able to trust it.

An Affair is a good film, made by a great director who wasn’t quite ready on the writing. But, he had a co-writer, so… who knows….

Over the Rainbow (2002, Ahn Jin-woo)

Lee Jung-Jae starred in the first Korean film I watched, Il Mare, and I’ve seen another one with him in it. Some bad one that was half-gritty cop movie and half English Patient. I probably did I write up, I remember typing that slight before.

Over the Rainbow is, therefore, his first good film. You can’t followed many actors anymore–even Meryl Streep throws you a curve these days–but it also gave me a nice introduction to Korean cinema. I go on and on about Korean films right after I watched one, then I say nothing about them for months, watch another and then go on and on for a while again. This film has a lot of problems. A lot of third act problems. It’s a cutesy mystery with a lot of flashbacks.

And some of the film doesn’t make sense. The flashbacks are to college, but it’s never specified how much time has elapsed since then to the story’s present period. It’s also predictable, but reminds me a great deal of the back of my old Sabrina (the remake) laserdisc. The conclusion is inevitable–you know what’s going to happen going in the door–but watching the film, seeing the people and their relationships develop–is what makes the experience rewarding.

Another review, somewhere I saw online because IMDb didn’t list writing credits, pointed out that, though Lee is good, the female lead, Jang Jin-Young, sort of walks off with the film. She’s excellent but the film coddles her for the first half or so, before you realize what’s going on. There’s nothing like watching a film and having no idea what you’re going to get in terms of a story. The last time I felt like that with an American film was Liberty Heights. And even though I had a rough idea what Over the Rainbow was about, I still got to experience it fresh. The only other way–besides foreign films–to get this feeling tends to be the “forgotten classic.” Wild River being my perfect example of that experience.

Warren Ellis, a decent comic book writer, said that he wasn’t all that impressed with Korean films because they were like Hollywood films, only not made by committee. Or something to that effect. I agree to a point, but Korean films seem to still love cinematic storytelling. They’re still excited about it. When Judy Garland sings “Over the Rainbow” and you lay it over some action, there’s power to it. Same with “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” which the film does in another scene. Both these songs, if they appeared in an American film, would likely be redone by Madonna or Jennifer Lopez or something. They’d be jokes. Ha ha, look at these sentimental fools. The sentimental has an important place in cinema. The most sentimental moment in American cinema in last–what, ten years?–came in Magnolia of all films. Certainly not regularly recognized for its sentimentality.

Over the Rainbow is a good example of exuberant, rewarding filmmaking. With one exception (the shitty cop/English Patient movie), all the Korean films I’ve seen are exuberantly made, in love with medium. So, I can’t say if you see one Korean film, see Over the Rainbow. But if you see three….