“Next Sohee” Theatrical Poster

Director: Jeong Joo-ri
Cast: Bae Doo-Na, Kim Si-eun, Jung Hoe-Rin, Kang Hyun-Oh, Park Woo-Young, Park Hee-Eun, Kim Yong-Joon, Sim Hee-Seop, Park Yoon-Hee, Yoon Ga-I
Running Time: 135 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

It can sometimes be a tough job being a Korean cinema fan, with some of the best directors often taking years between the movies they release. Oh Seung-wook made audiences wait 9 years between 2015’s The Shameless and 2024’s Revolver. Lee Chang-dong kept us hanging for 8 years between 2010’s Poetry and 2018’s Burning. Even a director as popular as Park Chan-wook left 6 years between 2016’s The Handmaiden and 2022’s Decision to Leave. Jeong Joo-ri, a former student of Lee Chang-dong who made her debut with 2014’s Bae Doona starring A Girl at My Door (which Chang-dong notably produced) looks set to follow a similar path, with her sophomore feature Next Sohee finally arriving in 2022.

Once more directing from her own script, Joo-ri has also re-teamed with Bae Doona (The Drug King, Tunnel), however Next Sohee for the most part belongs to actress Kim Si-eun as the titular Sohee of the title. Here given her first starring role after minor supporting turns in the likes of The Negotiation and Boys Be!! (along with plenty of K-drama work), Si-eun completely owns the role as a teenager attending a vocational college in rural Korea, one that offers a pathway to fulltime employment through placement in an ‘externship’ program. Despite dreaming of being a K-pop dancer, when she’s given the opportunity to be placed in a telecom companies call centre, the corporate surroundings being a stark contrast to the factories many of the students find themselves placed, it seems like she’s landed herself a good deal.

It’s only once she starts the role that she learns her job is to take calls from customers wanting to cancel their subscription service, and convince them to stay (or even better, convince them to stay and upsell another product). Faced with high retainment targets, an initially supportive manager who soon begins to crank on the pressure, and the frustration of discovering her salary incentives are being withheld due to contract fine print, what seemed like a good deal gradually starts to turn into a soul-destroying nightmare. The call centre environment that Next Sohee takes place in somewhat inevitably echoes the previous year’s Aloners, a movie that similarly focused on a female who joins a call centre, however despite the initial similarities Joo-ri takes her story in a very different direction.

Watching someone fresh to the workforce become slowly beaten down by the unfairness of the program she’s been placed into may not sound particularly engaging, but much like A Girl at My Door Joo-ri’s ability to create characters who feel relatable shines through. Si-eun is a revelation in the role, imbuing Sohee with a sense of resilience that makes her easy to root for, even when the difficulties she faces start to feel overwhelming (especially when her manager commits suicide in his car). It’s worth to point out that once I read Next Sohee was being directed by Joo-ri, I decided to avoid reading anything further and went in blind, so after spending an hour in the company of Si-eun and getting to know her character, it came as a genuine shock when she also chooses to kill herself.

It’s at this point that the plot reveals itself to be a tale of 2 halves. In the latter half we meet Bae Doona’s character, who up until this point we’ve only glimpsed briefly in the dance studio that Si-eun would go to practice her K-pop routines. In recent years Doona seems to have become the go-to Korean actress for playing slightly distant cop characters with an undisclosed traumatic past (usually re-located to a rural station for good measure). Here she could well be playing the same character as she did in A Girl at My Door, and of course we also saw a similar role in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker. Initially tasked with a straightforward round of interviews of those who knew Si-eun so the case can be closed, when it comes to light she wasn’t the first person to kill herself who worked at the call centre, Doona refuses to wrap things up, and begins to look deeper into what led to the deaths.

There’s a quietly seething anger that permeates throughout Next Sohee, an anger that bubbles ever closer to the surface as the narrative progresses. Joo-ri has stated in interviews that the idea for the story came about after she saw a news report in 2016, covering an incident where a girl who’d been sent on an externship program in a call centre killed herself within 3 months of working there. The investigation afterwards brought to light the unfavourable working conditions and how, to some degree, the students who were placed from vocational colleges were being exploited by the companies the colleges partnered with.

The narrative structure is a bold one, eschewing what looks and feels like a murder mystery in its back half, but isn’t precisely because we already know there’s no mystery, having seen how Si-eun chose to take her own life. Rather it becomes the tale of 2 people, both somehow connected through their willingness to rail against the injustices that they see, even though there’s no singular villain for either them or us as the audience to aim our anger towards. In many ways Doona’s role doubles as the avatar for the audience watching, as what starts as mild frustration at the lack of clarity she gets from anyone she speaks to soon develops into outright exasperation at the system that’s operating in plain sight.

On the one hand the approach can be viewed as a nihilistic one from a purely plot perspective, but Joo-ri’s script and direction is constructed in such a way that our closeness to the characters onscreen feels like it’s more important than the circumstances that surround them. In any other filmmaker’s hands Next Sohee would likely have been structured from the perspective of Bae Doona, uncovering how Si-eun decided to take her own life by unfolding it in flashbacks, thus framing it from the perspective of the mystery genre. However by spending the whole of the first hour with Si-eun it feels like we get to know her intimately, as if she’s the main character of the movie (which it could well be argued she is), and therefore allowing the investigation in the second half to be more about getting to know Doona’s character, since we already know Si-eun’s story.

The reason why Next Sohee manages to be so compelling is in the way it crafts a pair of characters who in some way mirror each other’s values, refusing to be defeated by a system that’s so deeply entrenched it’ll never change, yet still remain true to their principles. Will that make it enjoyable for everyone? Probably not, and those expecting any kind of cathartic payoff at the end of the 135-minute runtime will be left disappointed. The injustice is a part of the hierarchal nature of Korean society, and no single suicide or person is ever going to change that, so in the face of such an overbearing beast, the best you can do is be kind to others and let them know they’re not alone. In the final scene Doona’s character seems to realise this, embracing a willingness to do what’s in her control to try and stop a similar tragedy happening to the next Sohee, and hoping the offer of connection is enough.

Managing to tread the fine line between being both a subdued character study and seething indictment of certain aspects of Korean society, Joo-ri’s sophomore feature is a success not so much because of the system it portrays, but rather the impact that it has on the characters that she’s created. For Bae Doona, Next Sohee marks another stellar performance that’s a standout in her filmography, and for Kim Si-eun she’s already gone on to be cast in the 2^nd season of the popular Netflix series Squid Game. As for Jeong Joo-ri, my only hope is that we don’t have to wait another 8 years for her next production to hit the screens, as she remains one of the brightest talents working in Korea today.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8.5/10

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“Broker” Theatrical Poster

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda 
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, Lee Ji-eun, Lee Joo-young, Park Ji-yong, Im Seung-soo, Kang Gil-woo, Lee Moo-saeng, Ryu Kyung-soo
Running Time: 129 min. 

By Paul Bramhall 

There are those filmmakers out there whose cinematic identity feels distinctly attached to the country that they hail from. Akira Kurosawa will always be associated with Japanese cinema much the same way Jean Luc-Godard will always be associated with French cinema. So it’s always interesting when we see such filmmakers venture further afield. In the Asian film industry, such ventures tend to inevitably involve an excursion into Hollywood, whether it be Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights from 2007, or Park Chan-wook’s Stoker from 2013.

What makes Broker unique in this world of cross-cultural pollination, is that it sees a Japanese director at the helm of a Korean production. While there have been examples of Japanese and Korean collaboration before in recent years, 2016’s Colonel Panics springs to mind directed by Cho Jin-seok with an all-Japanese cast, it remains a rare occurrence. Here it’s Hirokazu Kore-eda (The Third Murder, Still Walking) in the director’s chair, an auteur already firmly established as a master of meditative family themed dramas in his homeland, and still hot off walking away with the Palm D’Or prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters. Interestingly Broker isn’t the first time for Kore-eda to venture outside of Japanese language cinema following Shoplifters, with 2019’s Paris-shot The Truth headlined by Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, and Ethan Hawke.

While that production felt like a decidedly slight take compared to Kore-eda’s multi-layered character studies that audiences are used to, Broker sees him back in more familiar territory, dealing with the meaning of family. He’s also brought along a powerhouse Korean cast to populate his tale, with Song Kang-ho (The Drug King, Memories of Murder) reunited with Gang Dong-won (Peninsula, Master) 12 years after 2010’s Secret Reunion. This time rather than awkwardly thrown together South and North Korean agents, Kang-ho is playing a down on his luck laundry shop owner, and Dong-won a part-time worker at a church orphanage. The church features a relatively new concept on Korean shores – a baby drop box for mothers to drop off their unwanted babies.

A law means that any baby that’s left with a note from the mother saying they’ll return can’t be put up for adoption, however since only 1 in 40 who leave a note actually do return, the pair run a side hustle acting as brokers to sell the babies to couples who, for various reasons, can’t go down the formal adoption route. While fundamentally they do what they do for the right reasons, the practice is still highly illegal. Their scheme has a spanner thrown in the works when the mother of the latest baby, played by Lee Ji-eun (more popularly known as K-pop star IU), actually does return the next day. Thankfully the baby has yet to be sold, however her suspicions are raised as to why the Kang-ho and Dong-won are looking after him themselves, rather than being in the orphanage with the other babies. Sussed out, upon revealing the kind of money they get from a sale, the unlikely quartet set out on the road together to find a buyer.

The best cross-cultural collaborations will always be those in which both sides influence the other, and Broker could well be argued to be one of the best examples of this. While I was initially hesitant about how Kore-eda’s distinct style of Japanese stillness would carry over into a Korean production, as a director he’s embraced the aesthetic tone of Korean cinema and put his own distinctive stamp on it. The fact that Kang-ho and his ragtag gang are being followed by a pair of cops, played by Bae Doona (the only one in the cast to have worked with Kore-eda before, on 2009’s Air Doll) and Lee Joo-young (Baseball Girl, The Negotiation), gives the narrative a vaguely thriller like feel. In perhaps the most unexpected departure for a Kore-eda movie, we even get a pair of Korean gangsters, thanks to Kang-ho being heavily in debt (and other elements which would be a spoiler to go into).

At the heart of Broker though is still an exploration of Kore-eda’s most frequently visited theme of family. The narrative morphs into a loose road trip movie, with Kang-ho’s battered old laundry van driving around Korea to meet prospective buyers, and the pair of cops following them at a leisurely pace behind, just waiting to catch them in the act of exchanging money so they can move in for the arrest. It’s while on the road that Kore-eda’s trademark skill as a filmmaker comes to the fore, as the layers that make up each character are gradually revealed through moments of inconsequential dialogue and exchanges. Each has their own backstory that’s led to their present-day motivations, and even when those motivations turn out to be in conflict with each other, the confined environment and shared goal begins to organically bring them closer together, forming a kind of unrelated dysfunctional family unit.

Kang-ho is the master of bringing an understated hint of comedy to many of his roles, and the best directors know how to lean into it while avoiding turning him into a stereotype. In recent years we’ve seen the likes of Bong Joon-ho with Parasite and Jang Hoon in A Taxi Driver exploit this to their movies benefit, and similarly here Kore-eda extracts a standout performance, so much so that Kang-ho walked away with the Best Actor award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Indeed despite the seemingly heavy subject matter, there’s a lightness of touch on display through much of the runtime, and a welcome sense of humor that frequently bubbles to the surface.

The meetings with the prospective buyers are a highlight in the way they balance sensitivity and humor in just the right measure, from a couple who complain about the baby’s lack of eyebrows, to another who the cops illicit to act as potential buyers fumbling their lines about having a low sperm count. Perhaps it could be a personal preference towards Korean cinema over Japanese, but I’d daresay that out of the movies I’ve seen helmed by Kore-eda so far, I’d consider this his best. It could well be down to the way the plot is structured in such a way that it has a narrative thrust lacking from much of his Japanese output, the pacing of which keeps the momentum moving forward without sacrificing any of the intricate characterisation that his most acclaimed works are known for.

While on the surface the brokers of the story are Song-ho and Dong-won, the real stroke of genius about the title Broker is watching the character dynamics change in such a way that sees the role shift to others, even if it’s only a state of mind rather than an occupation. Everyone here is missing something from their lives, and while at its most literal it may be a child, in other ways it’s something more, and Kore-eda uses Broker’s structure to explore that sense of longing. The talent that he has is that it never feels overbearing, instead slowly pulling the audience into the characters world, and letting the themes play out in a naturalistic way.

Broker builds to an understated scene in a hotel room which is both quietly heart breaking while also life affirming at the same time, a masterful payoff that could have been clumsy and saccharine in the hands of anyone else, but here is executed to perfection. At face value Kore-eda’s latest deals with issues of adoption and the challenges faced within the process, however the bigger picture is one of human belonging, and the urge we all feel at some point in our lives to belong and connect with others. The decision to tell his story through the lens of Korean cinema proves to be an unlikely match that hits all of the right notes, and the final scene will likely have many thinking for a long time after the credits finish rolling. I know I still am.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 9/10

The post Broker (2022) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Drug King” Korean Teaser Poster

Director: Woo Min-Ho
Cast: Song Kang-Ho, Cho Jung-Seok, Bae Doo-Na, Kim So-Jin, Kim Dae-Myung, Lee Sung-Min
Running Time: 139 min.

By Paul Bramhall

I finished my review of director Woo Min-ho’s last movie, the excellent Inside Men, by stating my hope that “his next movie is at least on par with what he’s pulled off here.” 3 years later and that opportunity is now upon us, and it comes in the form of The Drug King, a story spanning the decade that was the 1970’s, and the impact that drugs had on it in Korea.

While Inside Men was anchored by a powerhouse performance from Lee Byung-hun, The Drug King enlists one of the most iconic faces of Korean cinema, Song Kang-ho, to carry proceedings. Kang-ho plays a small time smuggler who assists the facilitation of fake watches in early 70’s Busan. A simple man whose only real ambition is to make ends meet for his wife, kids, and unmarried sisters, when an opportunity presents itself to get involved in the lucrative drug trade, the financial rewards make for too good of an offer to pass up.

So begins the overly familiar tale of the small fry who works their way up to be a drug kingpin, and destroy everything that they hold near and dear in the process. The go-to genre movie is of course Brian De Palma’s 1983 classic Scarface, however it’s also been done before in Korea, most recently in 2012’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, which sees Choi Min-sik’s naïve customs officer work his way up the drug trade. So the question is, apart from a stellar performance from Song Kang-ho (which let’s face it, is a given), what else does The Drug King bring to the table which sets it apart from the other entries in the genre?

The answer is, as much as it pains me to say it, nothing. Min-ho’s latest is one of those infuriating failures where the blame lies solely at the director’s feet. On the surface at least, it’s a movie that has everything – a cast most directors would lose an arm for, the amazing production values and attention to period detail we’ve become accustomed to from Korean cinema, and a soundtrack filled with 70’s classics. So what’s the problem? Put simply, The Drug King is a bore. With a runtime of 140 minutes, the pace will likely test the patience of even the most ardent Korean cinema fan (a group that I count myself amongst).

Half of the problem lies in just how tried and tested the story is. We know how these tales play out, so there needs to be some differentiator for the audiences to buy into it – that could be great characterization, a twist on the perspective the story is told from, or a setting we haven’t seen before. The Drug King offers up none of these, instead falling back on the most barebones plot of the everyman who becomes corrupted by the drugs he’s peddling. This could still have been effective if it was at least told in an engaging way, but Min-ho’s script translates awkwardly to the screen, with the changes in Kang-ho’s personality seemingly taking place from one scene to the next, rather than occurring with any kind of natural build-up.

Onscreen there’s also a glaring lack of tension. The drug trade is a dangerous business, however Sang-ho’s entry into the world of drug making and trafficking is remarkably uneventful, with a good 70 minutes dedicated to what feels like an inordinate amount of gurning, dancing, and general idiocy. I know it was 70 minutes, because I checked the runtime at one point believing/hoping that it must almost be finished, only to realise I was just half way through. The first real sign of any genuine tension comes at a party Kang-ho is attending, at a point when he’s already established himself under a fake name in the drug trade, and an officer from the KCIA recognizes him from when he was arrested and tortured several years before. However the issue is quickly resolved, again dissipating any chance to inject some urgency into the pacing.

Out of all the crimes The Drug King commits though, the biggest one is without doubt how it wastes an incredible cast. This is a movie that brings Song Kang-ho and Bae Doona (in her first movie since 2016’s Tunnel) back together, a pairing that resulted in some of the most memorable scenes in Korean cinema thanks to their turns in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host and Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It’s been 12 years since they last appeared in a movie together, but with characters as underwritten and underdeveloped as we have here, the joy of seeing them reunited is short-lived. Throw in supporting roles from the likes Jo Jung-suk (The Face Reader), Lee Sung-min (The Witness), Choi Gwi-ha (The Outlaws) and Song Young-chang (a guy who I swear spent the 00’s dying in every movie he appeared in), the fact that none of them contribute any real significance to the overall plot is a wasted opportunity.

If any positives can be drawn from The Drug King, then it’s in the production design, and the way it incorporates the political turmoil of the time. Kang-ho spends plenty of time jetting between Korea and Japan, and both locations are brought to life through impressive sets, littered with small details like movie posters of the time and old soju bottles. Indeed at times it feels like the most well developed characters in The Drug King are the sets, rather than the actors that populate them. Min-ho has also ambitiously attempted to incorporate the various political controversies of the time (such as Park Chung-hee’s 1979 assassination) into the narrative, with Kang-ho involving himself in various political organizations by day. While such inclusions in and of themselves are interesting, their role in the plot seems like a case of attention grabbing padding, rather than adding any real meaning.

For Hong Kong cinema fans, there may also be one ‘bonus’ positive. For those who never thought there could be a connection between a Song Kang-ho and Jimmy Wang Yu movie – well, Min-ho’s latest is the production to prove them wrong. The 1975 Hong Kong and Australian co-production, The Man from Hong Kong, famously used the British band Jigsaw’s single Sky High as its opening theme, and 43 years later, so does The Drug King! Admittedly, it’s a great opener. What can I say? I’m not averse to clutching at straws.

Min-ho’s latest ultimately saves its final derailment for last, dragging its feet to an ending which shamelessly lifts wholesale from De Palma’s Scarface, as a paranoid Kang-ho locks himself up in his own mansion with his drugs and a collection of shotguns. Derivative as it may be, it should have been one last ditch shot of adrenaline in an already bloated and lifeless slog of a movie, however even the finale can’t bring itself to go out with a bang, instead choosing to go for a disappointing fizzle of a conclusion. It inevitably begs the question of what Min-ho was looking to achieve with The Drug King. Its unwavering focus on Kang-ho to the detriment of everything else arguably doesn’t justify such a long runtime, but at the same time any hint of an interesting subplot fades into the background before it’s given a chance to start. Like I said at the beginning of the review – it’s an infuriating failure.

When Min-ho initially released Inside Men it came in a trimmed down 130 minute version from his original 3 hour cut, which eventually saw the light of day because audiences were left wanting more. With so much peripheral plotting that meanders to nowhere in The Drug King, it could well be the case that there’s a much longer cut of it out there as well, but I find it hard to believe anyone would be able to endure more of its coma inducing pace. For me the jury is still out on Min-ho as a director and screenwriter, however if The Drug King is indicative of the style of movie he wants to make, I’ll clock out here.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3.5/10

The post Drug King, The (2018) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Tunnel | DVD (Well Go USA)

Director: Kim Seong-Hun
Cast: Ha Jung-Woo, Bae Doo-Na, Oh Dal-Su, Shin Jung-Keun, Nam Ji-Hyun, Cho Hyun-Chul, Kim Hae-Sook, Yoo Seung-Mok, Park Hyuk-Kwon
Running Time: 126 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Not to be confused with the 2014 South Korean horror movie, Tunnel 3D, director Kim Seong-hoon’s latest effort is a decidedly 2D disaster movie, which, in the grand tradition of many a disaster movie, puts its ill-fated location as the title. For many, the concept of Tunnel will most likely bring back memories of Sylvester Stallone bringing his macho heroics to the tunnel that provided the setting in the 1996 disaster movie Daylight. While that movie used the testosterone primed plot of a tunnel filled with flames and enough air to last a few hours, Seong-hoon dials things back to a more realistic setting. 20 years on since Daylight, Kia car salesman Ha Jeong-woo finds himself trapped behind the wheel of his car (a Kia of course), when a tunnel literally caves in on top of him.

It’s unusual for me to cover the plot for a movie I’m reviewing in the very first paragraph, but the plot for Tunnel can essentially be summarised with the above sentence. Just lose the Daylight reference. There’s no doubt that the sales pitch to make Tunnel must have been a tough one, not only is Jeong-woo’s predicament limited to the caved in tunnel, for a large part he’s not even able to budge from the interior of his car, as it’s completely surrounded by rocks and dirt. The fact that Seong-hoon is the man in the director’s chair likely put the producers mind at ease, as his 2013 sophomore feature, A Hard Day, proved to be one of the best thrillers to come out of Korea in a long time. Displaying a deft hand at incorporating a number of laugh out loud moments of black humour into the narrative, he’s an obvious choice to adapt So Jae-won’s novel of the same name.

The same goes for Ha Jeong-woo as the leading man. In 2015 Jeong-woo could do no wrong, starring in Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination and Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. Ironically Tunnel is not the first time he’s had to put on the equivalent of a one-man show, with 2013’s The Terror Live seeing his performance restricted to that of a TV studio. Jeong-woo brings a likeable presence to the role, and the same applies to the actress playing his wife, Bae Doo-na. After her powerhouse performance in 2014’s A Girl at my Door, the role of the wife in distress seems remarkably slight as a follow-up (not withstanding her 2015 collaborations with The Wachowskis in Jupiter Ascending and the Netflix series Sense8), and she doesn’t have much to do except act upset and hopeful in equal measures, but it’s still a welcome sight to see her back on the movie screen.

Seong-hoon has to be given credit for cutting straight to the chase (which considering the protagonists predicament, may not be the most appropriate word to use). Within the first 5 minutes it’s quickly established that Jeong-woo is (a) a car salesman, (b) it’s his daughter’s birthday and he’s bringing a cake home with him, and (c) the elderly gas station attendant fills his car with more fuel than he asks for, so gives him 2 free bottles of water to apologize. From the moment he drives out of the gas station in the opening scene, it’s only a matter of minutes later when the tunnel he’s driving through begins to collapse around him, in an impressively rendered CG sequence which again goes for realism more than spectacle.

It’s once Jeong-woo finds himself alone, buried under half a mountainside, that we start to see the elements of Seong-hoon’s style that made A Hard Day so successful. The same streak of black humour runs throughout the perilous scenario Jeong-woo finds himself in. From the first time he manages to make contact with emergency services, and the person taking the call fails to grasp exactly how much of the tunnel has ‘caved in’, to his encounters with a mischievous Pug that’s also trapped. Contact is eventually made with the head of the rescue operation that arrives onsite, played by Oh Dal-soo, continuing his mission to appear in every other Korean movie that gets made (in 2015 alone he had roles in 6 productions). While Dal-soo constantly gets cast as the bumbling everyman, somehow he still injects enough of whatever character he’s playing to ensure his performances never blend into one, and here he’s as effective as always.

It quickly becomes apparent that Tunnel has broader intentions than just providing a straight forward tale of a man stuck in a tunnel. Ever since the Sewol ferry capsized in 2014, which resulted in 304 deaths (many of them secondary school students), followed by the government and medias subsequent poor handling of the facts in the aftermath, there’s been an increasing undercurrent of mistrust towards those in authority. This has spread to the countries cinematic output, with productions like Inside Men and Train to Busan taking the opportunity to make scathing attacks on a government which has largely lost favour with the Korean public. This trend continues in Tunnel, however it’s handled in a less angry manner than in the examples mentioned, instead using comedy to take just as effective swipes at the media and government officials.

In one particular scene, Bae Doo-na arrives on the site of the collapse for the first time, and at one point is called to meet a government official. Frantic to hear some good news, the official tells her to look in a certain direction, revealing it to be a photo opportunity for the press to grab a snap of him and the wife of the man who’s trapped together. The other officials then awkwardly step into the shot so that they can each get a photo taken with her for the press. The awkwardness is only matched by how funny it is. In another the rescue team send a drone in to gain visibility on the extent of the cave in. After the drone is airborne, Dal-soo gives the order to the press that they can activate their drones, at which point about 20 others zoom up into the air, some crashing into each other and the entrance to the tunnel in their eagerness to get in first.

It’s a completely cynical look at the way both the media and the government use tragedies to further their own personal interests, but it’s done with a razor sharp wit, easily making such scenes some of the highlights of the movie. Of course Jeong-woo is never off-screen for long, and even without any other characters to immediately interact with, his performance is completely engaging as he comes to terms with his predicament, and exactly how long he’s going to be in it. Suddenly the 2 bottles of water and birthday cake take on a significant level of importance, and the juggling act of trying to keep a cell phone battery alive for an uncertain amount of time, all bring a fitting level of tension to proceedings. Seong-hoon also wrings plenty of subtle comedy from the confined space Jeong-woo is in, such as when he decides to open a bottle of washer fluid and starts cleaning the interior of his car, simply because there’s nothing better to do.

Of course, being the most commercial movie Seong-hoon has helmed to date, it raises the tricky question of exactly how Jeong-woo is going to get out of his seemingly impenetrable burial. Like many Korean movies, regardless of all that’s come before, the tone ultimately leads to a switch towards the melodramatic. This aspect is actually handled relatively well, the main issue is that Seong-hoon aims to cram in a number of scenes regarding the bureaucracy of the rescue attempt, all of which see Jeong-woo disappear off-screen for just enough time to notice. The fact that the scenes are thrown in towards the end also hinder the pacing. From an accidental death, to the public losing interest, to the corporations decision to restart construction on a 2nd tunnel being built. None of these abruptly introduced sub-plots really add to the story, with the new characters the scenes introduce us to barely registering.

Thankfully the plot reins itself back in for the final scenes, providing an expected happy ending that, while predictable, is still very much welcome. Tunnel is clearly Seong-hoon’s most commercial feature to date, and he handles it well, faring much better than higher budgeted Korean disaster movies like 2009’s Haeundae and 2012’s The Tower. While it doesn’t feature any spectacular scenes of mass destruction or feats of heroism, instead it gets by on its sharp wit and a trio of stellar performances from Ha Jeong-woo, Bae Doo-na, and Oh Dal-soo. Its premise may be basic, but thanks to some smart storytelling and an assured sense of direction, the light at the end of the Tunnel is definitely a bright one.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Tunnel (2016) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“A Girl at My Door” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Jeong Joo-ri
Producer: Lee Jun-Dong
Cast: Bae Doo-Na, Kim Sae-Ron, Song Sae-Byuk, Kim Jin-Gu, Son Jong-Hak, Na Jong-Min
Running Time: 119 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Korea has arguably been producing the best movies to come out of Asia for the last 15 years, however one criticism of the industry has always been the lack of lead roles for women, outside of romantic comedies and flower vase roles in male dominated thrillers. In what’s still considered to be a male dominated society, the issue is confounded further by the lack of female directors. While directors like Shin Su-won and Bang Eun-jin are exceptions to the rule, there’s no doubt that the Korean film industry could be even stronger if it embraced the large amount of female talent that’s out there.

With A Girl at My Door, first time director and scriptwriter Jeong Joo-ri will hopefully be a name that can be added to the expanding pool of female directors active in the industry. Joo-ri’s talent had a notable hand to guide it, which came in the form of Lee Chang-dong. Chang-dong, the director of such masterpieces as Green Fish, Oasis, and Secret Sunshine, was Joo-ri’s teacher at the Korea National University of Arts, and he clearly had enough confidence in his students ability that he came on board as producer for her debut.

A Girl at My Door also gives us a female-centric story, which is headlined by Bae Doo-na and Kim Sae-ron. Doo-na is no doubt one of the most recognizable faces in Korean cinema, having caught audiences attention with her roles as the quirky girlfriend to Sin Ha-gyoon’s mute in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, to the crossbow wielding family member in Bong Joon-ho’s monster movie The Host. Understandably Hollywood came calling, and most recently she’s starred in the Wachowskis’ (of The Matrix fame) blockbusters Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending.

Sae-ron has equally being making a name for herself as one of the busiest child actors in Korea. While readers here will most likely recognize her as the kidnapped girl Won Bin goes on a mission to rescue in 2010’s The Man from Nowhere, she’s been in plenty of drama series’ and movies in-between. While in The Man from Nowhere Sae-ron was just 9 years old, 4 years later and she’s now a teenager, and very much looking to be one of the brightest female acting talents in Korea.

In A Girl at My Door Doo-na plays a police captain who, in the opening, we learn has been transferred to a new post in a remote seaside town. As she drives into the town on a bright summer’s day, she inadvertently runs through a puddle, dousing a scruffy and tattered looking girl by the roadside with water. The girl is played by Sae-ron, and as Doo-na stops the car to check if she’s ok, instead of speaking they wordlessly stare at each other, before Sae-ron dashes off into a field. It’s worth noting that Sae-ron’s character is called Do-hee, which is also the name of the movie in Korean, and from that first meeting between the two characters, the ominous tone which you can’t quite put your finger on is set.

It’s established from the word go that proceedings are going to revolve around the relationship between Doo-na and Sae-ron’s characters, and Joo-ri shows an assured hand at constantly feeding small hints of information about both of their characters as the movie progresses. This isn’t a type of movie which spoon feeds the audience, and it’s all the better for it, as with each part of their history that’s revealed, we gain a greater understanding of their actions, which makes it a highly rewarding experience to watch. That’s not to say things move at a fast pace, if anything the opposite is true, however there’s never a moment when proceedings feel slow or dull, as every scene and frame is there to add something to the fabric of the story being told.

When it’s revealed that Sae-ron’s character is living with her highly abusive step-father and his elderly mother, who abuse her both physically and verbally on a daily basis, Doo-na’s police captain eventually ends up taking Sae-ron under her wing, allowing her to stay at her home. However when the step-father’s mother is found dead, seemingly by accident, things begin to get complicated. The step-father is played by Song Sae-byeok, and in a refreshing change from the comedic roles he’s most well known for, here he comes across a constantly drunk brute, always seething with anger. Feeling harassed from the sudden attention off Doo-na’s police captain, both because of the abuse, and what appears to be his hiring of illegal Indian immigrants to help run the towns fishing fleet, he begins to do his own research as to the reasons behind her transfer.

A Girl at My Door is a decidedly difficult movie to market, while for international audiences it will most likely be touted as a murder mystery, the event is really only a device in which to frame the relationship that develops between Doo-na and Sae-ron. It’s the effect that they both have on each which forms the heart of the movie. Both characters are essentially broken, Doo-na from whatever it was that led to her being transferred to such a remote town, and Sae-ron from the years of abuse she’s being suffering after being abandoned by her mother. While Doo-na’s story arc is thoroughly addressed, to go into any details of it would be to spoil some of the movies finest moments.

Joo-ri shows the influence of her teacher in many of the scenes, with plenty of visual metaphors to enjoy for viewers who are looking for them. Perhaps one of the best being the image of a trail which is overgrown with vines and bushes, with Sae-ron’s house at one end of it, and the vast expanse of the ocean at the other. The direction the characters go along the trail, from the beginning to the end of the movie, being a meaningful representation of their mindset. While the story may seem like yet another entry in Korea’s genre of dark family dramas, this would be misleading. A Girl at My Door is actually about the hope that two people can bring to each other, and while neither of the two leads are given an easy time throughout the movie, their efforts are ultimately rewarded, and as a result, so are the audience.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

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“The Host” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Bong Joon-Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Ko Ah-Sung, Kwon Byung-Gil
Running Time: 120 min.

By Ningen

A subordinate Korean guy who probably works for Harvey Weinstein at his day-job listens to his white American supervisor scientist know-it-all guy and dumps some random chemicals into the sink, even though the pipe leads to the Han river. What the toxic mix creates is some sort of weird hybrid between Godzilla ’98, Yonggary, and the spawn from the Alien films. The mutant starts attacking South Korea by swallowing random people and spitting them out into a drain so it can save them for later. Among one of its victims is the daughter of Gang-Du Park, a slacker snack vendor who belongs to a dysfunctional family of losers. When he finds out that the girl is still miraculously alive, he teams up with his dad and siblings to save her and possibly even take down the beast in the process. Unfortunately, because he was bitten, Gang-Du gets targeted by the U.S.-led government. The feds want to perform experiments on civilians, while using a viral outbreak as the pretext for quarantining the “hosts” of said virus.

While I do like the fact that the monster in the film doesn’t look out of place in spite of being cg, The Host suffers from its secondary anti-American plot, since it confuses the viewer over whether they’re watching a horror flick or a political thriller. Plus the arc may not sit well with the easily- offended foreigner who doesn’t like us being equated with the Japanese from WW2. (Of course, since the average American doesn’t care about history, it’d probably fly right over their heads anyway.) Anyway, while the human experimentation analogy didn’t bother me, I’m still baffled about how the hero’s able to escape the situation. In fact, it’s actually the second escape he makes-the first one with his family-and both drag down the pacing.

I like my horror to have a sense of fear, but unfortunately, The Host suffers from a sense of reptition. You either have to sit through countless scenes of Nam-il (Gang-du’s daughter) trying to escape or Gang-Du’s family bumbling their way through encounters with the creature in question.

By the time they finally get an edge on it, the fights start feeling anti-climactic. Also, while some may think the negative endings for certain characters add some darkness to the tone of the film, I’m annoyed that the film had me rooting for them, only to have them lose anyway. What’s the point? Even the way The Host finishes is uncertain. This might normally add a sense of forboding, but in actuality, feels out of place, since you can’t tell whether the director’s trying to be cute or scary.

In conclusion, The Host is not bad, but it doesn’t deliver.

Ningen’s Rating: 6/10 for atmosphere and creature-shop effects; 5/10 for story; 7/10 for interesting characters (6.5 total)

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“Barking Dogs Never Bite” Korean Theatrical Poster

AKA: Dog of Flanders
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Lee Seong-Jae, Bae Doo-Na, Byeon Hee-Bong, Miriam Yeung Chin
Running Time: 106 min.

By Mighty Peking Man

The first time I saw Bae Doo-Na in Park Chan-Uk’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, I knew for a fact I would develop an interest in her right there and then. Not since Faye Wong’s presence in Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express has there been a single performance by an actress who has impressed as much as Bae Doo-Na has. On-screen, she seems to possess the acting talent of Meryl Streep, the style of a casual punk-rocker, and the natural persona of the girl next door; as jumbled as that description may seem, that’s my take on her. She’s definitely one of those rare talents that I love seeing, no matter what type of role she’s playing.

In Bong Joon-ho’s debut feature, Barking Dogs Never Bite, Bae Doo-Na plays Hyun-Nam – a good-natured, perky woman who works in an apartment complex office. After watching an Inside Edition-type program about how a heroic woman fought off an armed robber during a jewelry robbery, something sparks off in Hyun-Nam’s mind: all of the sudden she wants to be famous and recognized on TV for some kind of similar good deed. Little does she know, she’ll soon get her chance.

Enter Yoon-Ju, played by Lee Seong-Jae (Attack the Gas Station), a semi-depressed, unemployed college lecturer who lives in a small flat with his estranged pregnant wife. At the beginning of the film, one thing is made quite clear, Yoon-Ju hates the sounds of barking dogs. So basically, when he hears them bark, he terminates them. Plain and simple.

As Yoon-Ju’s life gets more stressful and complicated, his hate for the sound of barking dogs becomes more intense. His actions on dogs lead to serious mishaps and he soon realizes what he’s doing is not making life easier, it’s just making it more of a living hell. On top of it all, Hyun-Nam witnesses his wrong-doing and she’s on her way to do anything she can to catch him; only if she knew who it was (she saw him from a distance, not seeing his face).

Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite is as good a comedy and drama, just as it’s good a dark comedy. Asian myths (?) of human dog-eating are explored and made fun of. Lots of witty angles and intense situations are guaranteed to put you in pure awe.

To simply put it, Barking Dogs Never Bite is a must-see.

Mighty Peking Man’s Rating: 8/10

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“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” Korean Theatrical Poster

AKA: Myboksu
Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Song Gang-Ho, Shin Ha-Gyun, Bae Doo-Na, Im Ji-Eun, Han Bo-Bae, Kim Se-Dong, Lee Dae-Yeon
Running Time: 175 min.

By Owlman

While watching SFMV, I couldn’t help recalling my own bitter memories of a tragic moment several years ago. A very dear female friend of mine was found stabbed to death and her body dumped in a hockey equipment bag behind a hotel. While her family grieved, my own grief got to the point where it degenerated into pure, unadulterated rage. That rage then further declined into murderous thoughts when they finally caught the bastard who did it.

During that time, I kept wondering whether it would be prudent for me to step into the courtroom proceedings and give that motherfucker his due, courtesy of me and Ginsu, regardless of the cost. To me, it just seemed like the only right thing to do, given the circumstances.

Which is where SFMV comes in. This movie brought that whole scenario rushing back to my mind. Like Eq says in his review, there are no real evil people here (other than the black market human organ thieves) – the main characters simply fall into a downward spiral as a result of unfortunate circumstances that befall them. Watching Ryu and Park make their swift and parallel moral decline due to their equal burning search for vengeance was heartbreaking because it made me realize how easy it could be for anyone to do the same.

It is mainly because of how that message was delivered by Park Chan-Uk that I highly recommend this fantastic film.

However, I must also point out the masterful direction, cinematography, and acting of SFMV. The director used a lot of long takes that offered up an entrancing look into the daily tribulations of Ryu – his work at the electronics manufacturing plant, his journey back home, and his care for his ailing sister. While the movie moved in a slow pace, it wasn’t to the point where it induced sleep. Quite frankly, I think too many people expected a nail-biter with lots of explosions and bodies. SFMV was obviously nothing like that – suspense came in the form of wondering what Ryu and Park were going to do to each other as it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that both were going to kill each other.

Violence came in a shocking manner. It wasn’t so much the gore of bloodletting, which was not as extreme as some would have led you to believe. It was really the delivery of it after such a lull. Like I said above, you knew that violence was going to eventually happen, but after getting used to ordinary citizens like Ryu and Park, it came as a shock that such individuals could be capable of delivering it in such fashion. When you combined the violence with the leisurely pace of the rest of the film, it played out almost like a Takeshi Kitano film.

As for the acting, Shin Ha-Kyun met the challenge of portraying Ryu with all emotions and thoughts solely through facial expressions and actions – a challenge that he met very well. Song Kang-Ho played out the role of Park just as well, starting off as a fairly happy and successful company president and gradually declining into a raging father. Bae Doo-Na portrayed Yongmi as a really annoying bitch at first but it became clear that her character was very important as a catalyst for everything and she did just fine.

In summary, SFMV comes highly recommended, if not for the jarring message that it delivers, then for its wonderful direction and characterization.

Owlman’s Rating: 10/10

By Alexander

(Many spoilers ahead, people.)

“It wasn’t so much the gore of bloodletting, which was not as extreme as some would have led you to believe.” So says frequent poster and sometime reviewer owlman in his review of the excessively violent, needlessly shocking, gratuitous and ultimately boring Korean dud “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.” I’ve read hundreds of the reviews on this site, but never have I scratched my head in confusion like I did upon reading owlman claim, “[it] was not as extreme as some would have led you to believe.” I mean, ANM’s (another frequent poster on this site) near-obsessive fawning over Jean-Claude Van Damme makes more sense than that statement does.

Are you joking? Being ironic? Did we watch the same fucking movie? The same “Sympathy” that features a grotesquely realistic scene of a man slashing his own bloated belly with a knife? Another involving a knife being jabbed into an artery and an ensuing close-up of blood roiling beneath the guy’s skin until he removes the knife at which point gallons of blood erupts from his neck, geyser-like? The same movie that shows, from afar, a man getting bashed in the head with an aluminum bat? A knife being plunged into a chest? A man’s palm slashed with a knife? Achilles tendons ripped apart, in close-up? Scenes of torture? Necrophelia? Bloody urine? Not extreme enough for you, owlman? Dude, do you store severed heads in your freezer next to the Ben and Jerry’s? Human hearts perfectly preserved in Gladware next to the leftover take-out?

Jesus, dude. You scare me.

“Sympathy” is extremely violent. Gratuitously so. NEEDLESSLY so, which serves only to detract from what otherwise could have been a moving and thought-provoking story of revenge on a much deeper level than what we’re used to seeing in the usual Hollywood fare. For example, I thought the most shocking and disturbing scene was of the drowning of the daughter, filmed over the shoulder of a preoccupied man, and the ensuing close-up of her half-submerged in water, lodged against a rock. THAT scene freaked me out, and terrified me on a level that managed to add suspense to the story without turning me off to it.

Remember the torture scene in “Reservoir Dogs”? It was shocking and believable and underscored the bad-ness of Mr. White’s character. It was relevant and necessary and it wasn’t one of a series of equally gruesome and horrifying scenes throughout the film. It was the ONLY horrifying scene in the film, which made it that much more effective. Remember the scene of Travolta and Jackson in the sedan in “Pulp Fiction”? The one where the gun accidentally goes off, destroying that kid’s head in the back of the car and leaving brain matter on the rear window? THAT is the kind of scene that plays repeatedly in “Sympathy.” But Tarantino’s bit works because it’s so novel. It’s not followed by more horrific violence and gore. It’s followed by great dialogue and advancement of the story. Hell, Tarantino even lampooned the waves of violence in Asian films in “Kill Bill.” “Sympathy,” however, plays it straight without a bit of irony (with the exception of the title, as there is no one involved who deserves our “sympathy”)…and it fails. It’s just too much. (“Sympathy” warrants comparison to another ultra-violent Korean movie, “Old Boy.” But the violence in “Old Boy,” while gratuitous, fits within the context of that film. “Sympathy’s” doesn’t.)

As mentioned in previous reviews, there are long stretches in the movie with no dialogue at all. This would have worked fine had this silence not been punctuated with so much villainy and graphic violence. Instead of giving me a few minutes to process the plot (which is ridiculously confusing at times) and themes, we’re instead left bracing ourselves for the next scene of depravity.

Alexander’s Rating: 5.5/10

By Equinox21

Park Chan-wook is at it again. After all the high praise he received for his masterpiece J.S.A., he got the chance to finish his Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance project that he’d started working on even before J.S.A. What results is perhaps one of the most brilliant, brutal and gritty films to ever come out of Korea.

Deaf and mute Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun) dropped out of art school to work two shifts at a factory to earn some money so he could pay for medical treatment for his sick sister (Lim Ji-eun), who is in dire need of a kidney transplant. The transplant will cost 10,000,000 won (roughly $8500), which is all the money Ryu has to his name; they’ll need a different donor, however, as Ryu and his sister have different blood types. The waiting list could be very long for a donor, so he meets with some black-market organ dealers and they come to the agreement that he’ll give them one of his kidneys and the 10 million won in exchange for a matching kidney for his sister. He wakes up from his less than clean surgery only to find the dealers, along with his money and a kidney, gone. When Ryu is then fired for missing too many days of work, he and his friend, Cha Yeong-mi (Bae Doo-na), take it upon themselves to kidnap the daughter of the president of his former place of employment, Park Dong-jin (Song Kang-ho), for a 10 million won ransom. Of course, things go wrong and Park takes it upon himself to seek revenge for the death of his daughter. If this has you confused, don’t worry; watching the movie is far easier to follow and far more enjoyable, I’m sure.

There is so much to love about this movie. For one, there are no bad guys in this movie (with the possible exception of the organ dealers), everyone simply does what they feel is the right thing to do at any particular time. Whether what they do is bad or not, does not make the characters bad in and of themselves. Another thing is the direction and visual artistry that are absolutely stunning. This has some of the most beautiful, yet extremely simple, images yet filmed. A third is the acting, which shines. The three lead actors all bring far more to their characters than you would ever expect to see. Finally, the brutality of this movie is completely justified and almost artful, albeit difficult to watch at times. All these things together make for one of the most enjoyable films of 2002.

The most interesting elements of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance are the two main characters, Ryu and Park. The fact that Ryu is a deaf/mute is discussed, but never becomes the major focus of the story. It is simply a trait of his character that is accepted and no one makes a big deal of. Ryu simply deals with the life he’s dealt, difficulties and all. Park on the other hand seems to have almost everything going his way; president of a successful electronics company, plenty of money and a loving daughter. When his daughter is taken from him, he decides to sell the company and his house so as to devote all his time and effort to seeking vengeance. He stops at nothing to get it. As stated before, neither of the characters take the actions they do because they’re bad people, they’re just in situations where they feel the things they do are for the right reasons.

There isn’t much that Park Chan-wook could have done to make this a better film, it is very nearly perfect as is. It’s extremely different from, yet just as enjoyable as, his previous film Joint Security Area. If you want to see a terrific looking, extremely brutal yet highly enjoyable character study, see Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance as soon as possible.

Equinox21’s Rating: 10/10

By Joe909

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is not a pleasant movie to watch. In many ways, it represents all that is good and bad about Korean cinema. Good because of the lush cinematography and effective acting, bad due to the snail’s pace and overt exposition.

MPM’s review below goes into great detail about the plot, so I will just leave it that Sympathy is a morbid tale that is nearly Shakespearean in its darkness. And it is this darkness that leaves such a bad taste in the viewer’s mouth. There are no redeeming, tension-relieving qualities in Sympathy. The lush cinematography lingers over horrifying images, such as a dead bodies floating in a lake, or bloody bags of human remains resting on the ground.

Like most Korean movies, it takes quite some time for the plot to kick into gear. It is this casual pace that most turns me off to Korean movies. I’m as much for jumping on a bandwagon as the next guy, but I still need some convincing when it comes to Korean cinema. The ones I have seen take too many of the bad qualities of Japanese cinema (slow pace, tedious melodrama) and too little of the good qualities (i.e. economical storytelling) of Western/Hong Kong-style cinema.

Undoubtedly Korean films look better than any other Asian cinema; most of them look like they could’ve been produced by a fat-walleted Hollywood production company. I think it is this aspect that has drawn Hong Kong movie addicts to Korean cinema. I also feel that the average HK film-watcher has gotten older, perhaps mellowed with age, and so is open to movies that are less frenetic.

All told, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a dour, downbeat, modern film noir that isn’t afraid to show images most other films would shy from. I didn’t like it, but I still respect the director’s vision, and his conviction in releasing such a non-crowd pleaser after the well-received “JSA.”

Joe909’s Rating: 6.5/10

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