The Martyred: The Truth Is Not God's Way

Captain Lee believes that nothing is above the truth: not personal reputation, not war, not religion, not love. So when he finds out a dozen Christian pastors, killed by the communists, groveled before their execution, he wants everyone to know. Unfortunately for him, Pastor Shin and Captain Jeong feels differently. One wants to protect the memories of the dead. One wants to use the mass killing as patriotric propaganda. As for Chaplain Goh, he isn't as confident about what's right and what's wrong since he abandoned his congregation at a crucial moment not long ago. He knows his word is mud.

Ultimately, the truth is complicated. Because the dead men were tortured — beaten, tied up, branded. Should they be reviled if they faltered? And what does the good person do in such a case? Expose a moment of weakness or take on the crimes themselves? What you think is the right action is going to determine who you believe is the hero in Yu Hyun-mok's The Martyred (a.k.a. Sungyoja) which includes a pretty trippy sequence in which the pastor communes with a spirit who makes the heavens throb with light. Not that he believes. To the contrary, he thinks Christianity is hokum but if it makes the masses feel better then why not? "There is no God. All we have is the cross we must bear."

The Policeman's Lineage: Like Father, Like Foster Son

I wish I lived in a world in which the good cops trying to catch bad cops didn't hava a leg to stand on, that cops only broke laws to catch criminals, and not because they wanted to live outside the law themselves. That's the world The Policeman's Lineage wants you to entertain. But I don't see what's to gain from buying into such a fantasy. We all know that there are corrupt cops, greedy cops, violent cops, unrepentant cops, power-hungry cops and most other cops will protect those cops even if they're not committing the same crimes themselves.

In The Policeman's Lineage, naive rookie cop Choi Min Jae (Choi Woo-sik) struggles to figure out whom to trust in this make-believe police department. Detective Park Gang-yoon (Cho Jin-woong) who's living in a fancy apartment and wearing designer clothes so he can get close to the !% committing high-level crimes? Or the Internal Affairs department investigating this enforcer for shady behavior? Because this is a movie, our young officer has a hard time making the call. In the real world not directed by Lee Kyu-maan, the choice is obivous... certainly after your boss has taken a mini-circular-saw to your face. Who cares if he was friends with your daddy.

Wall to Wall: In the Sub-Basement

I'm all for a dark movie, even a grim one. But this Kim Tae-joon thriller is too depressing for me. When a corporate drone (Kang Ha-neul) who moonlights as a food deliveryperson gets buried under the debts associated with buying a Seoul apartment, the accumulation of bad luck, bad choices, and bad living overwhelmed me. By the time he got consumed by his greed around a shady online trade (for which he'd liquidated his mortgage), I had already checked out. I just couldn't handle any more bad news. I also didn't believe that his luck would turn around or if it did, that he'd be able to sustain it.

Additionally, I didn't care. And since this main character isn't sympathetic, what does it matter if he strikes it rich or ends up in the poorhouse. Who really cares if he was set up and someone had put a noise-making device installed in his apartment so that all the enraged neighbors would turn against him. Who cares if his phone screen is shattered and almost out of juice. At this point, I'm only halfway through the movie, and yes, I watched 'til the end. Because the midway point is when the suspense part kicks in. And despite the cards remaining stacked against the hero when things turn mysterious, Wall to Wall does become less of a downer. Because the weightlifting undercover reporter (Seo Hyun-woo) who lives upstairs and the former prosecutor (Yeom Hye-ran) who owns the penthouse have major problems of their own. Misery loves company, y'know.

Circle of Atonement: Head-Spinning

There's a lot of coincidence at work in the thriller Circle of Atonement. Teacher Nam Cheol-woong (Son Ho-joon) gets involved with a star pupil Lee Jang-hyun (Kim Yoo-jeong) who is the surviving daughter of Shin Ji-chul (Lim Hyung-joon), the man who years ago murdered his girlfriend Kang Yoo Shin (Seo Ye-ji) who -- in his mind at least -- resembles this new student. Furthermore, Jang-hyun is blamed for killing her own mother with a gun dropped by police officer Lee Sang-won (Sung Dong-il) who was the lead detective on the case involving Yoo Shin and has secretly adopted the basically orphaned Jang-hyun.

I can practically see co-writers/co-directors Lee Dong-ha and Park Eun-kyung's intricately layered corkboard of index cards labeled with characters and plotpoints as well as the web of strings that connects them together like a spider's web. Some of the notes feel sketchy. Would Cheol-woong would want to kill Jang-hyun as revenge? Would Sang-won be so glib about Cheol-woong's slit wrists? When Reporter (Jin Kyung) starts poking around, looking for answers, we've got the same questions and more. But she's got a serious task ahead of her if she wants to write the article documenting this whole chain of events which started with a poor father who can't afford diapers and leads to a double suicide with hydrochloric acid then a pair of handcuffs ripped apart through rage.

Long Live the Island Frogs: The Sporting Life

On the surface, Long Live the Island Frogs is about a pair of dedicated, well-meaning teachers — married Mrs. Kim (Kim Seon-hui) and her blackbelt husband Mr. Gwon (Shin Il-ryong) — who come to a tiny fishing village on an isolated island in order to change the lives of poor, rural children through the power of education. But unlike the couple foregrounded in Shin Sang-ok's stirring Evergreen Tree, director Jung Jin-woo's married instructors are more committed to imparting basketball skills than grammar, history, and mathematics. As the movie progresses, we witness a real devotion to getting sports equipment, not books and school supplies. Even a recently acquired television set (the only one in town) is exclusively used for watching games and learning strategy.

I, like many others however, enjoy a good sports movie so watching these young boys and girls run drills in the mud, perfect their layups, and compete in hard-earned uniforms likely moved me more than any spelling bee could. (The basketball footage is incredibly exciting!) The film has plenty of subplots too, like the young boy who struggles to overcome the physical setbacks brought about by polio, and the reunion of the ferryman and his wife (who abandoned their son for a job in Seoul a few years ago). The up-and-coming team's national recognition leads to a shift in community priorities, from getting drunk to building a dock. If athletics can make that happen as effectively as scholarly pursuits can, I'm all for it.

People in the Slum: Once a Crook

If you're rich and you get caught doing a crime, what of it? Money can clean up your reputation over time. But if you're poor, no such luck. Shoplift and you're branded for life. So when pickpocket Kim Ju-seok (Ahn Sung-ki) gets busted for petty theft, his life is more or less ruined in perpetuity. He'll do his time in prison. He'll have a temporarily faithful wife Myeong-suk (Kim Bo-yeon) and a spitfire of a son (Cheon Dong-seok). He'll even get a job as a taxi driver. But ultimately, his life is doomed because from hereon, should anything bad happens in his vicinity, he's going to get fingered for it.

Such is the world of Bae Chang-ho's People in the Slum, a film parable in which one young man's "bad luck" seems to taint the lives of everyone around him. Even his mother-in-law dies early. Maybe the preacher who's now a local junk-seller (Song Jae-ho) escapes his shadow but the former holy man keeps his distance. As the crook's former wife puts it "I love you but I'm tired" and "I'm scared something bad's going to happen when you're around." That's why she stays with a drunk (Kim Hee-ra) instead. Misfortune has a shelf-life. When it passes the expiration date, it's a curse. And a curse is catching.