The Devil's Deal: Take the Lead

Has Cho Jin-woong been miscast in The Devil's Deal? I'd say so. That's too bad as I've seen him play an untrustworthy cop in The Policeman's Lineage and a wannabe Sam Spade in Bluebeard, a well-meaning mobster in My Paparotti and a singleminded detective in Believer 2. So why shouldn't he play a disenfranchised politician resorting to crime to rescue his failing career? It may be that Cho does best with a single clear objective and this part's too full of contradictions. Instead of offering a schizoid performance, he keeps avoiding the potential extremes. Whether he's matching wits with Mr. Moneybags (Lee Sung-min) or cajoling a small-time hood (Kim Mu-yeol) into loyalty, Cho is strangely out of his element yet never overwhelmed. Confusing. He's not fierce or scared or sly. He's neither completely out of control nor momentarily in total control. It likes he can't commit.

Writer-director Kim Mu-yeol's script is likely part of the problem. Kim introduces an unhappy wife (Son Yeo-eun) then gives her nothing to do; starts a subplot with a reporter (Park Se-jin) only to have her disappeared; roughs up a doublecrosser (Kim Min-jae) without having him spill the beans. He neither allows Cho's aspiring assemblyman to outsmart the bigwigs nor to land in a Kafkaesque hellscape. Indeed The Devil's Deal can't figure out how to get its protagonist out of one unsuspenseful middleground. Here's an amoral guy with neither exceptional smarts nor an intoxicating drive. Will he win or lose? And what does winning mean when you were never a serious contender?

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.

My Paparotti: Sing Out, Louise

Who you watch a movie with — or who you encounter any type of art with — can have a major impact on how you experience it. I remember hearing a casette of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" with my mother in the car after a particularly tense exchange between the two of us in the car. And let me tell you, Flannery O'Connor's bleak short story about a mother and her estranged son has probably never had a pair of more attentive listeners — destination forgotten. Happily, my viewing of Lee Jong-chan's feel-good comedy My Paparotti was a less emotionally wrought exchange. To the contrary, this cinematic success story proved effervescent when seated beside by boyfriend who corrected subtitles, mimicked opera singing, and encouraged all my sentimental reactions.

So let others roll their eyes at this underdog saga of a young troublemaker (Sung Yoo-bin) whose passion for singing provides a way out of "thug life" and under the prickly warm tutelage of a disillusioned teacher (Han Suk-kyu) whose own music career was derailed by some ill-timed tumors on his vocal cords. As for anyone ready to dismiss this film outright as fantastical nonsense, know this: My Paparotti is based on a true story! Characters like the bossy high school principal (Oh Dal-su), the kooky love interest (Kang So-ra), and the brotherly, middle-management mafioso (Cho Jin-woong) may register as pure cartoon but real life has a place for exaggeration, too, especially when it makes you feel this good.

Believer 2: Repeat Crimes

Let's assume it's a given that most sequels are made because the originals earned too much goddamn money. Greedy producers see more cash ahead! Nothing will stop them from getting it either — not talent, not logic, not the passing of years, certainly not merit. With Example 1, Believer 2, that means hiring a new writer (Jeon Cheol-Hong) and a new director (Baek Jong-Yeol) who, in turn, serve up a convoluted plot finessed with torture porn and a final dedication to an actor from the first installment who died in car accident in the time in between. So what's up this time around?

• A dispirited lead detective (Cho Jin-woong) so obsessed with ones drug lord (Tzi Ma) that he'll fund his own flights to Thailand and Norway
• The return of two deaf-mute "cooks" (Kim Dong-young, Lee Joo-young) whose love cannot be stopped by blindness or mutilation
• A ventilated, wheelchair-bound, disfigured drug lord (Cha Seung-won) whose hospital gown remains spotless regardless of nearby blood splatters
• The lead villainess (Han Hyo-joo) — what used to be called a "psychobitch" with daddy issues — who constantly sticks her tongue in her cheek to alert us that... it's all tongue-in-cheek?

Are Bake and Jeon aiming for camp? If so, not everyone got the directive.

Believer: What You See Is What You Get

Visually, Lee Hae-young's Believer has all the components you'd expect from a thriller: the overhead shot of the car zooming down a lonely road, the stylish high heels stepping out of a car door, the close-up of someone doing a line of white powder, the helpless victim handcuffed to a chair... But despite the signature images, the endless backstabbing, the ever-complicating exposition, Believer never really manifests a world. I never sensed a camaraderie among the detectives, never bought the world-weariness of its lead cop (Cho Jin-woong), never cared about the two-faced naif (Ryu Jun-yeol), never felt the urgency of finding the mastermind druglord behind all the crimes.

In such a frame of mind, I watched Believer unfold with an indifference that made the subtitles somewhat irrelevant. Maybe the film would've been more cryptic if all I had to go on was the sight of shirtless men ranting, deaf cooks signing, suited men and women shooting, a poor dog bleeding. Certainly, the spectacle would make for a nice background when listening to an album by The Detroit Cobras or vintage Isaac Hayes. At times. But would I even look? Or would I close my eyes and feel the bass as a movie of my own making plays inside my tired head? No filmmaker myself, I'd probably be better served by checking out the original that inspired it: Johnny To's Drug War.

Bluebeard: Who's Killing Who?

I do appreciate a good opening and Lee Soo-youn's Bluebeard starts off strong. Its protagonist is a doctor (Cho Jin-woong) who's quickly established as uncoordinated (head-bumps and pratfalls), unattached (a box of forwarded mail) and unapologetically into mysteries (stacks of books abound). So when his butcher-landlord's dad babbles some creepy comments about body disposal while under anesthesia, this guy is all ears! ("The head is still in the fridge..." Oh really?)

In short, his new job as a temporary colonoscopist has put him in an ideal place to help solve an ongoing serial killer case. Maybe he too wants to write a bestseller. That would explain why, when the cops show up at the clinic, he doesn't share any insights or suspicions about that recently discoverd torso. He's caught between wanting to play Sam Spade and being too afraid to get involved.

Did I mention he's been having vividly bloody nightmares? Or that his primary nurse (Lee Chung-ah) may have a crush on him? Or that his son encourages him to play the lottery? Or that a strange man (Song Young-chang) is stalking him? How about a plot that is all but thrown out the window with a half hour left? My, my, my. Welcome to Gangnam!

Intimate Strangers: Fickle iPhones

How dumb is it to play a tell-all smart phone game with your nearest and dearest? Pretty dumb if you've got anything to hide, as do all the vivacious guests at this increasingly tense housewarming party where each has foolishly agreed to share any incoming messages or calls with everyone else at the table. They're not the first to make this mistake either. Director Lee J. Q.'s Intimate Strangers was inspired by Paolo Genovese's award-winning Italian movie Perfect Strangers (2016) which already had Álex de la Iglesia's Spanish variation of 2017 to its credit. (An American remake seems inevitable!) So if these old friends in South Korea had simply had a regularly scheduled movie night, they might have avoided a series of life-changing tragedies. Instead, they're about to have their real selves exposed in a single evening.

The big-hearted plastic surgeon (Cho Jin-woong) is involved in dicey business propositions; the brittle psychiatrist (Kim Ji-soo) is estranged from her teenage daughter; a bossy lawyer (Yoo Hae-Jin) is having a virtual "fling"; an amateur poet (Yum Jung-Ah) has a serious drinking problem. Et cetera, et cetera. Not everyone feels like a liar and a cheat. A sensible veterinarian (Song Ha-yoon), though the youngest, seems the most mature of the bunch while the one stag member at dinner, a quintessential drop-out (Yoon Kyung-ho) has been living a lie. Spoiler ahead: He's gay!

Winning attributes aside, none of them is particularly likable. Perhaps that's because they're way too real! A deflating ending in which we see what their lives would have been like if they had not accepted the far-from-innocent smartphone challenge undoes much of the power of what's preceded. Is screenwriter Bae Se-yeong telling us that we're better of not being honest with each other? I would have preferred he had pursued another question he introduced early in the movie. Are women more like iPhones and men more like Androids? As for me, I oft times feel like a Blackberry.