Secret: Marital Stressors

Does a person ever recover from being responsible for his own child's death? Detective Kim Sung-yeol (Cha Seung-won) got his daughter killed while drunk driving and chatting on the phone. Years later, not only does the guilt mess with his head but it's also undermining an ongoing investigation. What's the crime? A better question might be, what isn't? The list is long! Plus, nowadays, there's nothing that he won't do since he's already done the worst. What's ratting on your partner (Park Won-sang) compared to filicide? What's covering clues implicating your wife (Song Yun-ah) next to hiding your own culpability? Nothing, especially in a world where...

Criminals swing by the police headquarters to compare notes. Blackmailers dress up as clowns and sell chocolate. Former coworkers reunite despite a history of betrayal. Cops buy cake for a suspect's mother. The illogic goes even further: A junkie is brought to a live concert to identify a potential murderer (instead of someone showing that same addict a photo); a random man on his cellphone is accosted because a cop thinks that he must be the caller (as if everyone didn't own a cellphone). When Kim stopped to help a lady in a wheelchair despite being pursued by Jackal (Ryu Seung-ryong) and his muscle, I thought, that too is dumb. Motivation here is — as the title puts it — Secret at best? I guess writer-director Yun Je-gu knows the answer(s). He can keep them to himself.

A Special Lady: She's Got Alot Going On

Let me see if I've got this straight: A top level gangster (Kim Hye-su) with a prostitute backstory is looking to reconnect with her banished son (Kim Min-seok) and leave this criminal business to start a respectable life. Her boss (Choi Moo-seong) is supportive of her transition; her unhinged colleague (Lee Sun-kyun), who has drug dealer dreams, less so. The son doesn't know he's her offspring or that he was born in prison. We, as viewers, are never sure who his father is, despite what some characters say. A rival gangster whose eye she plucked out is seeking revenge since she killed his father. Equally angry is a violent prosecutor (Lee Hee-joon) who she blackmailed with a sextape costarring her not-so-bright protege (Oh Ha-nee).

To call Lee Ann-kyu's A Special Lady complicated is an understatement. But understated is definitely the heroine's conversational style, despite the anime-worthy bleached-blonde hairdo. She's also one of the few people in town who owns a gun so when everyone comes at her with a knife, she just keeps shooting them down. When she's out of bullets, she picks up a pair of scissors. Nothing can stop her. Who else would cross town to reunite with an ex with a knife still embedded in her thigh. No wonder this movie culminates with a marriage proposal. From whom or whether she accepts is neither here nor there. This movie has gone down the action movie rabbit hole.

12.12: The Day: The Shock of History

Admittedly my knowledge of Korean history is limited. I've gained some awareness after over a decade of watching Korean movies and having from a handful of books about Korean-American history but I can still be surprised by seeing actual events unfold that are well-known to anyone from South Korea. In this case, while I was aware of the military coup that followed the Korean president's assassination in 1979, I did not know any details about the power struggles that preceded the subsequent dictatorship. And so, my cursory knowledge was supplanted by Hollywood happy-ending conditing.

Because of this, while watching Kim Sung Soo's informative feature 12.12: The Day, I was foolishly, even stupidly, expecting that the forces of good — as represented by two-star general Lee Tae-shin (Jung Woo-sung) — would triumph over the forces of evil — embodied by his nemesis, the power-hungry, eventual president Chun Doo-gwang (Hwang Jung-min). Like here in the United States, the integrity of a few individuals, which includes Chief of Staff Jeong Sang-ho (Lee Sung-min), is much too easily, even decisively counterbalanced by the sliminess of a single man like National Defense Minister Oh Guk Sang (Kim Eui-sung). That the Korean people were eventually able to restore their government to something closer to a true democracy is kind of amazing. In that sense, 12.12: The Day does give one a glimmer of hope. In the streets but not on the telephone.

Man in Love: Preposterous and Delicious

For me, the signature moment in Man in Love — about a smitten debt collector (Hwang Jung-min) who's in hot pursuit of a financially compromised mark (Han Hye-jin) — occurs rather late in Han Dong-wook's movie. Their coerced, extended courtship culminates in a bizarrely poignant expression of devotion: a fart released while comatose. As ridiculous as this sounds, I cried when this moment happened because the act signified a tenderness capable of overcoming all. You might think that doesn't make sense and you might be right. But for some reason, the illogic of this kooky crime pic gets under your skin when you least expect it.

Is our reverence for love so heartfelt that we'd willingly accept the most absurd plot points as long as boy meets girl leads to boy marries girl? For one night, mine apparently was! I was willing to abide pop-up funeral processions, busdrivers with active dementia (Nam Il-woo), a terminal cancer revealed in flashback, and a do-gooder police detective (Nam Moon-cheol) who has a softspot for a violent repeat offender, recently released from the clink. As long as Hwang's puppy-dog eyes are pining for that bank teller, nothing seems far-fetched for me. If movies are supposed to be fantasies made real, then Man in Love is, just like its protagonist's wardrobe, flashy in the best way possible.

Decibel: Is That a Bomb I Hear?

Pure popcorn entertainment, Hwang In-ho's Decibel pits beloved Submarine Commander Kang Do-Young (Kim Rae-won) against former Staff Sergeant Jeong Tae-Ryoung (Cha Eun-woo), a madman planting explosives around town; specifically, bombs triggered by high sound levels meaning the kids at the neighborhood playground, at the public pool, and at the soccer game all need to hush. Good luck with that! As the uniformed Kang scrambles from one potential mass murder to the next, he's assisted by his wife Jang Yu-Jeong (Lee Sang-hee) who happens to be bomb squad brass and CBC reporter Oh Dae-oh (Jung Sang-hoon) who's oddly nonchalant when it comes to protecting his own son. (Happy to report he can take care of himself.)

Some people do get blown up, though. An underwater accident, revealed in flashback, has deaths in store fos us too — albeit of a nobler variety. Per the psychopathic-driven disaster movie genre's preset rules, the crazed mastermind does have a legitimate reason for causing citywide mayhem but his choice of a target feels a little misguided. When you're that filled with that much rage, directing your ire at the right person is often challenging. Inevitably, there's gonna be spill. In this case, there's also going to be debris. And a big news conference at the end where one now-wiser journalist asks,"What did you learn from all this?" As a viewer, feel free to skip that question.