Veteran: A Movie for the Resistance Movement

You tend to think of action movies as exaggerating dramatic conflicts as a way to heighten entertainment value but when you consider the level of corruption currently on display by today's American President and the sycophantic, morally bankrupt Republican party in both houses of Congress, it seems almost impossible to one-up the institutionalized rapacity, mendacity, racism, and sexism broadcast nightly on the network news. In other words, the grifter's world portrayed in Ryoo Seung-wan's Veteran comes across at this moment in history as unbelievably quaint. Viewed the year it came out — two years ago in 2015 — I'm guessing, I would've observed the bloodthirsty, sadistic son (Yoo Ah-in) of an unscrupulous businessman (Song Young-chang) who more or less gets away with murder thanks to ties to high ranking officials in the police department and judicial system as not so much realistic as illustrative. Now I know better.

I've no doubt that our elected officials, military personnel, government appointees, and business boardrooms are riddled with mercenary, amoral, self-serving racists from the top on down. I'm not saying everyone is a bad apple; I'm saying the rot is ubiquitous. Which is why good cops like Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min), his social-worker wife (Jin Kyung), and his immediate supervisor (Oh Dal-su) are so important to see in the movies. I also think the movie is pretty accurate in showing that the only way people change is when their personal circle is affected. The police chief (Chun Ho-jin) is probably taking pay-outs or at the very least caving under pressure from above but once a rookie detective (Kim Shi-hoo) gets stabbed, his loyalty to his men comes to the fore. I guess some people need to feel threatened to take action. Well, feel threatened then. And then resist, resist, resist.

Footnote: Don't miss Ma Dong-seok's all-too-brief cameo when he steps out of a crowd during the final fight between the movie's hero and villain.

The Indecent Family: Baby, Baby, Baby

When it comes to ancestry, we can only pretend to know who we are. Since the days of Abraham at the very least, people have been cheating, lying, deceiving, two-timing, and unknowingly — and even sometimes willingly — assuming the parentage of children not their own and sometimes not their partner's either. That family tree painstakingly updated in the front pages of the heirloom Bible was never intended to document the extramarital liaisons and illegitimate offspring of each generation. Instead it simply presents a purified blood line, the official record of marriages and baptized babies, the idealized past free from complications.

Just how farfetched that family flowchart can be is illustrated by Park Bo-sang The Indecent Family, a comedy in which father (Chun Ho-jin), mother (Lee Mi-sook), son (Yi Hak-young) and daughter (Ji Seo-yun) all are engaged in sexual pursuits outside their primary relationships. Naturally, since this is a movie, there are further complications: The sexy student (Kim Hyo-jin) being stalked by junior is being banged by daddy; the daughter's fiance (Yoo Tae-woong) is also the ob/gyn doctor for the mother who's been impregnated by the man (Kim Seung-woo) who ends up becoming the family photographer. If everyone here were a sentimental fool, the six adults in the final studio portrait would be celebrating twice as many anniversaries as that final picture would suggest.

As you might imagine in a movie that's also known as The Horny Family, there's a lot of humping going on. What you might not predict is the toe-licking, the semen-swallowing, and the desperation that accompanies mere hand-holding. Yes, The Indecent Family is as corny as it is crude! For me, the funniest bit of comic business involved a discarded ball of tissues soaked with ejaculate that accidentally gets wiped on quite a few mouths. The rest of The Indecent Family isn't that nasty. Despite all the hanky panky, these are traditionalists: married, middle class and monogamous — at least as far as their Bible knows.

Enemy at the Dead End: Murderous Thoughts Not for the Multiplex

I do think there's a good play somewhere in Enemy at the Dead End. Most of the action takes place in one setting -- a hospital room -- and it would be easy to trim the cast down to three main characters: Min-ho (Chun Ho-jin), the physically debilitated patient suffering from PTSD; Sang-up (Yoo Hae-jin), the amnesiac thug who may have killed Min-ho's wife and who occupies the neighboring bed; and Nurse Ha (Seo Hyo-rim), the ditzy orphan-nurse who is unaware that a blood feud is slowly emerging between the two men whom she is treating. If you needed to, you could always throw in a fourth actor to play a series of bit parts: Doctor, Ex-wife, Second Nurse, Hallucination... But you could probably make do with a voice offstage. Afterward, stripped down to its basic elements, Enemy at the Dead End would emerge as an effective, economical psychological thriller. Fueled by an experimental drug, the narrative would erupt with over-the-top performances that keep getting crazier and crazier without intermission.

But Enemy at the Dead End isn't a play. It's a movie. And because it's a movie, the action sometimes leaves the hospital room thereby diminishing the claustrophobia of a single setting and the bravura potential of the performances. I don't know that confining the action within four walls would have solved all this movie's problems but I'm guessing it would've helped some. Then again, it might've introduced others. Only one of the two male actors could probably sustain an unedited performance. The flashbacks would have to be replaced by exposition that could prove cumbersome. You'd probably have to rewrite the crazy doctor back story that got these two in the same hospital room to begin with. But given that Cho Owen and Kim Sang-hwa share both writing and directing credits, you'd have two people to work on rewrites and two people to work on figuring out how to make it work for a live audience when it didn't work on film.

And if Cho and Kim insist that Enemy at the Dead End should transfer to video once they've perfected the theatrical version, let it be for the small screen instead.

Finding Mr. Destiny: She Left Her Heart in Rajasthan

Must I eschew all stereotypes and accept that travel-agent-turned-matchmaker Han Gi-joon (Gong Yoo) is straight even though he plays with a fairy wand in his office, has a fabulous collection of cardigan sweaters, and hasn't dated any women his entire adult life? Must I dig a bit deeper to comprehend his attraction to Seo Ji-woo (Lim Su-jeong), a thankless stage manager who doesn't own a hair brush or an iron and who daydreams all the time about one chance romance ten years ago with a Korean guy in India? Worst of all, must I once again watch as the talented Jeon Soo-kyeong is relegated to a bit part, despite her kick-ass comic chops and Broadway belt of a voice? Well, if I'm streaming Finding Mr. Destiny, then yes, I really do.

Director Chang You-jeong's romantic comedy asks you to make an endless list of concessions outside of this too, probably the most difficult being that the flashbacks to India, involving Ji-woo and Gi-joon's doppelganger, actually have the makings of a pretty sweet little movie. Set in Blue City (better known as Jodhpur), these segments have a real freshness, in part because it's so rare to see a Korean flick with mainly non-Koreans as well as one set outside the mother country. You can easily imagine warming up to the slow-burn between Gi-joon's double and Ji-woo's younger self as they fall in love amid a swirl of colorful saris or under an ornate archway or across a plateful of steaming Pyaaz Ki Kachoris. If Finding Mr. Destiny were about these two summer lovers who Fate split apart then paired up again, I'd probably end up with a case of the warm fuzzies. You'll have to take a few tokes on a hookah to see that movie play out. This one is more about a child singer whose career took a nosedive when she grew up so she tabled her dreams and took a job backstage and is now about to settle for the cute guy who's been pursuing her. In the sequel, I imagine she'll eventually find her husband in bed with her single dad (Chun Ho-jin). I'm more than happy to help write that screenplay.

The Doll Master: Toying With Death

Mi-na (Lim Eun-kyeong) has a bone to pick. It's been 20 years since Hae-mi (Kim Yu-mi) unceremoniously dumped her and she's never been the same since. She's tearful. She's confused. She's seeking reconciliation. For years, they had seemed inseparable. Not lesbian lovers. Not best friends exactly. Something much more special than that. Something one of a kind. Theirs was the unrivaled relationship of a doll and her devoted owner.

A sentimental spin on Chucky from the Child's Play horror franchise, The Doll Master's Mina is a homicidal plaything, a toy who comes to life only to cause death, a bit of cuteness turned to creepy. Yet while Chucky is a sociopath, Mina is a spurned victim motivated by love, albeit a love that's gone fatally sour. After multiple attempts to rekindle the sweet devotions of childhood, she eventually opts for revenge on her former caretaker, a tomboy who's come to their hometown for implausible reasons: a random invitation to model for a miniature reproduction of herself. (She's one of five guests who've been lured there, the others being a morose novelist (Ok Ji-Young), a clownish photographer (Lim Hyeong-jun), a perky co-ed (Lee Ka-yeong) and an undercover cop (Shin Hyeong-tak). Only the novelist comes with her own doll though, a relatively subdued little guy named Damien.)

Mi-na isn't the only doll hellbent on vengeance either. In fact, compared to one of her kin -- a somewhat large figurine out to slaughter any descendants of the locals who literally got away with a murder 60 years ago -- Mi-na's obsession to revive a dead relationship seems quaint, her anger at failing to do so, petty. Think of all the teddy bears, action figures and hand puppets that could've become animated and joined her. She's alone in being unable to forgive and forget.

The action in Jeong Yong-ki's The Doll Master all takes place at a doll museum where Mrs. Im (Kim Bo-yeong) is possessed by an evil spirit that drives her to skip meals so she can paint red lips on porcelain heads. Her boyfriend and accomplice Mr. Choi (Chun Ho-jin) makes cryptic utterances while keeping her brother chained up in the basement. And if you think that porcelain saint outside is going to save anyone here, you couldn't be more mistaken.

A Dirty Carnival: How Do You Say Brando in Korean?

If the only Korean movie you ever saw was A Dirty Carnival (and frankly you could do a lot worse), you'd probably think to yourself, "Oh, I get it. Korea is the Italy of the Orient." This would be of course because you'd never set foot in Korea (or Italy) and had founded your interpretation on the films of Francis Ford Coppola and a passing knowledge of both countries' cuisines. And it's not just that A Dirty Carnival is so clearly an homage to the Godfather trilogy with its electrifying depictions of violence, its detailed deconstruction of family dynamics, and its paranoid portrayal of working for the syndicate. Once you engage in Korean-Italian associations, you realize how much the two nations have in common: noodles, a shoe fetish, a sense of pageantry for funerals, a love of public singing and drinking, even the art of film-making. If Yu Ha's mafia epic feels Italian (or at least Italian-American), it's because on some level that's what it wants to be. You can easily imagine Talia Shire cast as the sickly girlfriend played by Lee Bo-young, Al Pacino in the role of Zo In-sung's overly ambitious gangster and Brando in the role of the mafia don (ably embodied by Chun Ho-jin). Re-cast to your heart's content, people. A Dirty Carnival remains great on its own terms because the substitutions or cross-cultural counterparts never feel like inferior replacements. They feel like they demand respect. You respect what inspired it? You'll respect this, too.