Swing Kids: Race to the Finish

One archetype that has been gaining an alarming amount of traction on the world stage lately (and for understandable reasons) is the smug, middle-aged, racist, white American man who mistakes his largely inherited power for intelligence. It's not a pretty look, to put it mildly, but there's nothing about it that doesn't ring true in Kang Hyeong-cheol's Swing Kids, a weepy dance movie set in a Yankee P.O.W. camp on Geoje Island during the Korean War and which has as its villain an insufferable brigadier general played by Santa Barbara soap star Ross Kettle. The good guys are a black American lieutenant (Jared Grimes), a quadrilingual civilian woman (Park Hye-soo), and a captured commie soldier (Do Kyung-soo) who bond over tap dancing lessons which the American officer is giving somewhat begrudingly so he can reunite with his girlfriend in Okinawa.

Because Swing Kids is a musical of sorts, the fights between sides (and even within the troupe) sometimes take place as a battle of dance moves — and hilariously so. Because this is a war movie too, those feel-good fights escalate into gunfights with heartbreaking results. And because this is a Korean movie, the female lead is self-empowered, a woman who strikes back when struck, who's continually surprising us with her resourcefulness, and who never seems defined by her relationship to men. I never tire of this aspect in Korean movies, North and South.

The movie also has quite a cast of secondary characters: a chubby Chinese P.O.W. (Kim Min-ho) who has choreographic aspirations; a subservient lackey (Jong Jae-ryone) who turns one stereotype on its head; a bullying sergeant (A.J. Simmons) who may or may not be gay, a colossal assassin (Kim Dong-geon) who has the brain of a child... Plus, the translator (Park Hyeoung-soo) who gives commentary instead of translations and a band leader who's constantly saving the day. Oh, just see it already!