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.

Wonderland: Love Never Dies

After you died, would you want to live on as a SIMS character? Or, perhaps more importantly, is there anyone who's dead whom you wished you could still contact for videophone consultations? Kim Tae-yong's fascinating fantasy Wonderland explores the lives of a handful of characters for whom the answer to these questions is a troubled yes. A grandmother (Sung Byoung-sook) and her charge get to talk to dead mommy (Tang Wei) while she lives out her posthumous fantasy as an archaeologist. A simulator executive (Choi Woo-sik) seizes the chance to converse with the dad he barely knew before an awkward funeral he attended professionally. Even the flirty stewardess (Bae Suzy) gets to chitchat with her comatose lover (Park Bo-gum) as if he were spending time on a space station instead of in a hospital. [I'm assuming she had to get special paperwork signed allowing her to create a faux version of her boyfriend despite his continued existence on earth.]

As we watch the various characters struggle with the unreality of losing someone who is technologically kind of within reach, Wonderland poses interesting questions about the nature of existence and the price that comes with not dealing with grief head on. To its credit, Kim's curious scifi scenarios repeatedly reveal that maintaining pseudo-relationships exacts a toll as the interpersonal relationships in the here-and-now warp out of shape. I wouldn't classify Wonderland as a horror movie but the AI substitutions are subtly, unmistakably scary.

Time to Hunt: Stop Following Me!

Yoon Sung-hyun's heist-gone-wrong thriller Time to Hunt takes its time building up to its catalyst crime — the robbery of an illegal gambler's den — then turns into a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game in which crazed, corrupt cop Han (Park Hae-soo) stalks the four thieves even after he's retrieved the most-valued goods. Unaware of why they're being so viciously pursued puts these criminal buddies in a more precarious position than usual because they know there's nothing they can offer to make things right. This especially baffles Joon-seok (Lee Je-hoon) who's orchestrated the crime just days after serving three years in prison. He sees a better tomorrow for him and his buddies in Taiwan but first he'll have to make sure that the narcoleptic Jang-ho (Ann Jae-hong), the momma's boy Ki-hoo (Choi Woo-sik), and insider Sang-soo (Park Jung-min) survive for two more days.

You might think that they've got a decent shot at doing so considering their impressive cache of firearms but Han is not your typical hitman. He's more like a super-villain who can take any number of shots to the body and a fall into a river, and still have more than enough energy to reload and get back to shooting his sniper again. That makes for some heart-racing chase scenes that are only enhanced by an incredibly effective soundtrack and some truly lush cinematography. Judged as pure escapist fare, Time to Hunt ranks fairly high — especially since it clocks at well over two hours and this pandemic has left me with hours to fill.

Train to Busan: Zombies on Track

People are brain-dead. People might as well be dead for all the meaning their lives have. We can never escape the dead. So many meanings behind zombies in pop culture, right? Yet in a weird way, they're all related in that they all have to do with personal responsibility. If we're brain dead, who's fault is it? If our lives have no meaning, who could best change that? If we're haunted by our pasts, how do we reconcile ourselves to them? Thrillingly, Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busann addresses those big questions repeatedly instead of just serving us up the ravenous zombie, an image that frankly had started to decay.

What's changed isn't the zombies. Nope. They're still bloodthirsty, dangerous, infectious, crazed, and in this case, fast. It's the humans. In this very well-constructed, multi-layered script, Yeon has assembled a nice cadre of survivors: a ruthless investor (Gong Yoo), his sweet-natured daughter (Kim Soo-an), a big-hearted lug (Ma Dong-seok), his pregnant wife (Jeong Yu-mi), a shy baseball player (Choi Woo-sik), his girlfriend (Sohee) and a homeless guy (Choi Gwi-ha). You'll notice that all the women are defined by the men. A problem, agreed, but they're at least not completely helpless. Just watch that pregnant woman run!

And as the chemically-induced disease (caused by man's greed, what else?) spreads across South Korea (I'm guessing the North is safe), this small group (on a speeding commuter train out of Seoul) must fight with their paranoid peers (especially one deplorable businessman) as well as against the hungry hordes in order to survive. The rabidity of these zombies is something to behold, whether they're literally exploding through windows or racing up escalators, jumping on train cars or grasping on to the caboose (and then grasping on to the guy grasping on to the caboose, and then grasping on to the guy who's grasping on to the guy, etc.). The last time I saw a Korean horror movie this exquisite was Bong Joon-ho's The Host. Yes, Train to Busan is that good!