The Suspect: Never Enough Heroes

Who's your hero in Won Shin-yeon's intricate thriller The Suspect? You actually have a few choices here. Is it Ji Dong-cheol (Gong Yoo), the former North Korean spy who's desperate to find his wife and child? Or Min Se-hoon (Park Hee-soon), his South Korean counterpart who sees Ji's capture as his redemption? Or even Choi Kyeong-hee (Yoo Da-in), the reporter who looks to both men as a way to resurrect her career? You could even pick Captain Jo (Jo Jae-yoon), the resourceful, gum-smacking military sidekick who's here for comic relief. It doesn't really matter. Because everyone has the same nemesis: Kim Seok-ho.

As the film's just-mentioned, amoral, mercenary, duplicitous NIS Director, Jo Sung-ha gets a lot of mileage out of a shit-eating grin. He flashes his teeth whether he's outsmarting a colleague or making a shady deal, whether he's pointing the gun at his enemy or having that same gun's barrel pressed up against his forehead. No doubt his mother told him he had a beautiful smile as a child but the more he grins the more you'll grimace. I mean that as a compliment. As bad guys go, he's deliciously detestable. The car chases in The Suspect are terrific, the camerawork frenetic, but that sickening smile really takes the cake.

The Age of Reason: A Good Song With Not Enough Lee

How big a fan am I of actor Song Kang-ho? Well, I went to a midnight screening at AMC's dilapidated Empire 25 Multiplex in Times Square just to see The Age of Shadows this past weekend. That's pretty devoted. But you know what I realized in the process? I'm also a big fan of Lee Byung-hun his costar in Shadows and The Good, the Bad, the Weird and JSA: Joint Security Area. In fact, I'm such a fan of Lee that I felt incredibly glum after his character dropped out of the movie in the first few minutes. I know he's crossed over to Hollywood now —the G.I. Joe franchise, the Terminator reboot, The Magnificent Seven remake — but please people, don't tease me with a Lee cameo. Not at 12 a.m.!

So I'm just going to talk about the movie post-Lee, okay? (Not that this makes a difference.) My beloved Song plays a Korean cop who's sold his soul to the occupying Japanese but may find redemption with the resistance. He favors black leather jackets with a long cut and epaulets that are embroidered with gold thread. He's got a mustache that R.W. Fassbinder would've loved and speaks in a low gravelly voice that suggests an artist trying out something new. He's delightful. So are his costars: Gong Yoo plays a revolutionary leader who's still finding his legs; Park Hee-soon, a wiser elder; Han Ji-min, a tough-as-nails lady spy; and Foster Burden, a European sympathizer.

The Japanese, as you might expect given the subject matter are heinous. (Both Tsurumi Shingo and Um Tae-goo seem to relish playing sadistic baddies, with one egging on the torture of a female captive and the other slapping the hell out of an underling's face.) And while we know that the fight for freedom will prove victorious, there's still plenty of tension and suspense in The Age of Shadows. It's not Kim Jee-woon's best flick -- that's probably I Saw the Devil -- but it's a nice addition to his ever-growing oeuvre, which now includes at least one pic with exquisite 1920s costumes.

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!

Silenced: Making Noise About Crimes Against Deaf Children

You won't find me defending any criminal justice system when someone says it's unfairly prejudiced or arguing with the agitator who claims that the rich will always get away with the most heinous crimes or debating about whether there's a crime worse than child molesting. Yet while director Hwang Dong-hyuk and novelist Cong Jee-young and I might agree on such matters, Silenced -- the movie Hwang's made on Cong's book -- still left me feeling icky, not validated in my worldview. I can't speak to Cong's novel (The Crucible) but Hwang's depicted cruelties and perversions last a little too long for my taste. When a young boy is beaten by a teacher, the slapping and kicking goes on for an inordinate time; later a scene of a faculty member caressing a young boy's bare bottom is shot in a graphic manner that literally makes you sick. Perhaps that's Hwang's intent, to show the heinousness of the crimes, to not let us shy away from just how ghastly the tortures inflicted on the young deaf students of a special ed school in Mujin truly are.

This isn't simply a work of the imagination either. Cong's serialized internet sensation The Crucible was based on true events: From 2000 to 2003, five teachers and the principal of Gwangju Inhwa School raped or otherwise sexually assaulted at least nine of their students, with nary one of the perpetrators receiving a heavy sentence. To the contrary, some of the teachers eventually returned to their jobs. To its credit, the film remedied that somewhat as the public outcry following its release resulted in a resurrection of the case and stiffer punishments for some of those involved. Helmed by Gong Yoo as the new teacher who discovers the crimes and Jeong Yu-mi as the human rights activist who joins his fight in court, Silenced is important for what it accomplished. I imagined it may have also ruined the life of Jang Gwang who is so creepy as a pair of twin pedophiles that I can imagine people spitting at him on the street, his portrayal of unrepentant perverts is so complete.

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.