Second Life: Slow Study

Her homelife stinks. This we know when a teenager (Jung Da-eun) overhears her neglectful parents fighting in another room. At school, life's not much better when she wakes up in class only to find other girls having fun around a birthday cake which she is not invited to share. Will her situation improve when she gifts EXO concert tickets to her popular peers? Yes but...No good deed goes unpunished.

What goes wrong? Is it lying to her mother to get money to scalp those tickets? Or making up a story about two recently acquired rings out of her price range? Whatever her first misstep, by catapulting herself from outcast to kook, this troubled teen goes from being a source of indifference to a target of derision. Does she learn a lesson? Um, no.

Instead she attempts to frame one young woman whom she especially envies, a strategy that backfires terribly. Does she learn from this? Again, no. At least not immediately. But as the old A.A. adage goes: "Helping others is the foundation stone of recovery." Our anti-heroine may not be an alcoholic but she's definitely got issues. Perhaps some time hanging out with orphans will shape her into a better person. From the looks of it, she does become a better student. Which should serve her at the fancy private high school. But will it be enough?

Derailed: In Praise of Ma Don-seok

There are a few Korean actors who I'll see in anything: Song Kang-ho, Choi Min-sik, and Choi Eun-hie. Add Ma Don-seok to this short list. The hunky actor memorably came to my attention in the peerless zombie thriller Train to Busan in which he played one adorable, indestructible husband whose battles with the undead remain a highlight of the film. Since then I've seen him in Ashfall, Unstoppable, and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days and this guy always delivers. Impossibly charismatic and appealingly rough, he's a true seducer who manages to balance danger and deliciousness in a marquee-worthy way.

Those two contrasting qualities play out in a strange way in Lee Seong-tae's savage crime pic Derailed since his character here is an uneasy mix of the likeable and the despicable. On the good side, he's a doting father, a flirtatious husband, a righteous fighter who recognizes integrity; on the bad, he's a pimp, a swindler, a bully, and a dumbkoff. Do you root for him when he's pitted against a young car thief (Choi Min-ho) trying to rescue his runaway girlfriend (Jung Da-eun) from "the life" and a recently released, psycho ex-con (Kim Jae-young) who has some justifiable grudges? I couldn't decide. Derailed is one of those movies in which no one looks like a potential friend. Ever. It's also a very violent film where people are punched, pummeled, kicked, and baseball-batted only to recover impossibly quickly. There's blood and bruises aplenty but no swelling. Perhaps there are myriad ice-packs off-screen?