Harbin: Revolutionary Movies

As the U.S. government slides towards white-supremacist, patriarchal fascism, Hollywood is not exactly taking up the call to arms with escapist fare like The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the new Michael Jackson biopic. Which is why we'd do well to turn towards Korea for movies like Woo Min-ho's Harbin, a 2024 release that glorifies the resistance movement that followed Japanese occupation in the early part of the 20th century. This is no hagiography, however. The rebel leader (Hyun Bin) disastrously lets the enemy free without weapons so children won't die fatherless when his Japanese counterpart (Park Hoon) would have gladly killed himself to save face. Poor decisions lead to mass collateral damage and a basement of peers are eager to take on the parts of judge and jury.

How do you defend stupid actions in a war? You often can't. What can you do to make things right? Revenge, assassinate, self-sacrifice, the usual. Although Harbin is very much a movie about leaders pitted against each other within and without the resistance movement, this movie equally belongs to its supporting characters: Gong Boo-in (Jeon Yeo-been), Russian translator and dynamite resource; Kim Sang Hyun (Jo Woo-jin), bespectacled, former POW with PTSD issues; Woo Deok-soon (Park Jeong-min), the pragmatic soldier who just wants a drink; and Park Jeom-cheol (Jung Woo-sung), the one-eyed, furcoat model and munitions dealer. Perhaps the underlying message here is that sometimes a group has to pitch in to remedy a mess made by higher-ups; and that being a traitor never works in your favor. As one character puts it, "If Japan writes history, no one will remember us." Then another rejoins, "When you're dead, you're dead." You might as well be true to yourself while you can. Because "we live in place of our dead comrades." Always true. "Korea! Ura!"

Beasts Clawing at Straws: Survival of the Wicked

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means." So quipped Oscar Wilde. And while Wilde clearly didn't have Beasts Clawing at Straws in mind, the 100-something-year-old epigram definitely applies to Kim Yong-hoon's enjoyable thriller. Which says a lot because there are so many bad guys vying for that Gucci bag of cash. Many are psychos: the madam (Jeon Do-yeon), the guilt-ridden lover (Jung Ga-ram), the loanshark (Jeong Man-sik). Others are more like infuriating foils: the foul-mouthed grandma (Youn Yuh-jung) and the jerky manager (Heo Dong-won). Some are just complicated: the indebted call-girl (Shin Hyeon-bin) and the shady customs official (Jung Woo-sung). The only good people seem to be the naive janitor (Bae Sung-woo) and his cleaningwoman wife (Jin Kyung).

If this sounds like a lot of characters, you're not wrong. And they're hardly the only memorable ones. For instance, there's also a cannibal hitman (Bae Jin-woong) who never speaks, and a dim-witted best friend (Park Ji-hwan) who you may quickly write-off as doomed. Yet despite the huge cast, Beasts Clawing at Straws is never confusing or confounding. To his credit, Kim has crafted an intricately plotted crime pic in which your alliances are constanty changing and in a weird way, justice kind of prevails. Granted, in a very twisted manner. Side note: One of the production companies credited at the top is called Artsploitation and Beasts Clawing at Straws more than lives up to that description.

Hunt: Sadistic Spy Games

I miss the days when gunshots were few and far between in South Korean action pics. I also have a hard time with movies that involve interogations using torture because the violence seems so pointless since people often confess to whatever the accusation is when under extreme physical duress. Which brings me to Hunt, the weapon-heavy, gratuitously battering directorial debut of Squid Games actor Lee Jung-jae. In this spy pic about an attempted presidential assassination, the bullets fly with some regularity but the more effective conflicts are strictly mano a mano...like when two opposing police-like factions meet in a hospital hallway and one of the leaders shouts out "Push through!" Mob meet mob.

As for the two men helming these two rival groups, one heads the foreign arm of the South Korean Agency for National Security Planning; the other, the national branch. Both men are deeply corrupt. (Is it just me or would lead actors Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung make an sensational pairing for a Korean version of Sam Shepard's True West?) That one of them is fighting for peaceful reconciliation between the two Koreas is ludicrous to the extreme. Hat tips to Jeon Hye-jin as a persistent third-in-command, Jeong Man-sik as an eventually-comatose agent, and Hwang Jung-min as a North Korean defector with sass because even overlong movies that don't quite work can come with fine performances.

12.12: The Day: The Shock of History

Admittedly my knowledge of Korean history is limited. I've gained some awareness after over a decade of watching Korean movies and reading a handful of books about Korean-American history but I can still be surprised by seeing political events unfold, well-known to anyone from South Korea. In this case, while I was aware of the military coup that followed the Korean president's assassination in 1979, I did not know any details about the power struggles that preceded the subsequent dictatorship. And so, my cursory knowledge was supplanted by Hollywood happy-ending conditing.

Because of this, while watching Kim Sung Soo's informative feature 12.12: The Day, I was foolishly, even stupidly, expecting that the forces of good — as represented by two-star general Lee Tae-shin (Jung Woo-sung) — would triumph over the forces of evil — embodied by his nemesis, the power-hungry, eventual president Chun Doo-gwang (Hwang Jung-min). Like here in the United States, the integrity of a few individuals, which includes Chief of Staff Jeong Sang-ho (Lee Sung-min), is much too easily, even decisively counterbalanced by the sliminess of a single man like National Defense Minister Oh Guk Sang (Kim Eui-sung). That the Korean people were eventually able to restore their government to something closer to a true democracy is kind of amazing. In that sense, 12.12: The Day does give one a glimmer of hope. In the streets but not on the telephone.

A Man of Reason: Welcome Crimes Against Logic

Watching most contemporary action pics requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief. But if you can let go of particulars like how the combined blood loss from car accidents and bullet wounds would naturally prohibit a character from fighting and running at a physical peak then enjoyment may follow. I say "may" because sometimes these impossibilities are impossible to ignore. However, in actor Jung Woo-sung's directorial debut A Man of Reason such concerns did not trouble me. I was perfectly willing to accept such nonsense as a young girl (Ryu Jian) outrunning a trained dog in a dark house and the hero maneuvering through traffic as easily as a fleeing motorcyclist tossing bombs. A Man of Reason isn't concerned with keeping it real. It's focused on keeping it entertaining.

With that goal in mind (and a performance that feels like an invitation for Tom Cruise to remake), Jung packs his picture with visually stunning sequences: a gang of stuntmen (I mean thugs) fight to gain control of a spinning car in a fancy lobby; a pair of survivors dive into a giant birdbath as a building explodes into glorious fire. Would a recently beat-up second-banana of the underworld be able to survive multiple nails shot into his throat by a deranged assassin couple (Kim Nam-gil and Lee Elijah)? Could a single assailant take on an entire room of killers with only a flashlight and a glistening knife? If you're asking yourself such questions you're missing the point... and all of this movie's many pleasures.

Asura: The City of Madness: Politics as Usual

Watching this movie, as I did, the day after Trump got a bloody ear at a rally, Asura: The City of Madness lent credence to conspiracy theories that our former president staged his own assassination attempt, dead bystander notwithstanding. For somewhere early on in Kim Sung-su's political thriller, an equally corrupt, avaricious mayor redirects the attention of the media by having his head clandestinely sliced by a box cutter to salvage his rah-rah conference of self-promotion. That self-directed mutilation is especially creepy because Mayor Park Sung-Bae (Hwang Jung-min) — like DJT — emerges bloodied and defiant, using the injury as a way to paint himself as a martyr. Like Trump, too, he's surrounded by thugs with fear-based loyalty and questionable sense. The only saving (dis)grace for Park is that the justice department — represented by Special Prosecutor Kim Cha-in (Kwak Do-won), Chief Prosecutor Oh (Choi Byung-mo) and a hunky detective (Jeong Man-sik) — are only ever-so-slightly less slimy.

Stuck between the two feuding parties is Han Do-Kyung (Jung Woo-sung), a dirty cop willing to turn traitor on his boss if it means making money for his wife's costly medical treatments. The compromised morals of his cheery BFF Sunmo (Ju Ji-hoon) have more to do with career opportunities with a long game in mind. Eventually, both characters go off the deep end: one on his way up; one, his way down. Neither have luck on their side or as someone says at one point they're probably "trying to be clever with an inadequate brain." Recurring thought: Stay out of behind-closed-doors-with-a-knife politics.

Steel Rain 2: Summit: Negotiating

One unforeseen legacy of the international disgrace Donald Trump's four years in the White House may be how American presidents are portrayed in foreign films in the near future: In the Cold War drama Steel Rain 2: Summit (2020), for instance, scruffy U.S. President Smoot (Angus Macfadyen) comes across as a not-too-bright blowhard who makes — and tweets! — inappropriate remarks that serve no objective but hiw own self-aggrandizement. Compare him with South Korean President Han (Jung Woo-sung), a squeaky-clean, fawning career diplomat who's like the one dolphin swimming in a pool of sharks. Or North Korea's Chairman (Yoo Yeon-seok) who's grounded by a heartless determination exacerbated by anger issues. Each man has his limitations and his faults but only one comes across as a moron. "USA! USA!"

Not that Yang Woo-seok's political thriller is a sophisticatedly satirical cat-and-mouse game. Characters wear flag pins to remind you who's representing which country; history is explained as if the writing team were periodically mandated by an in-house Korean War scholar to drop data points. As for the central drama, it's strictly Tom Clancy hyperbole when a rogue general (Kwok Do-won) from Pyongyang takes takes our three world leaders for a bank-making submarine ride. Whee! Ka-ching! My final takeaways: The evils of capitalism are now recognized as a global problem; greed continues to be the ugliest of sins; nuclear war remains an option for our worst politicians; the American myth somehow survives despite the staggering pile of evidence to the contrary. One question: Is the movie's temporary Commander-in-Chief (Kristen Dalton) stateside modeled after a hawkish Hilary Clinton?

A Good Rain Knows: Love Is in the Air

Director and co-writer Hur Jin-ho's wondrous little romance A Good Rain Knows wastes no time in getting to the heart of the matter: Former lovers Dong-ha (Jung Woo-sung) and May (Gao Yuanyuan) are meant for each other but first they'll have to put aside any old resentments or reservations and rediscover those purer versions of themselves they were so many years ago. He's got to shed that unfeeling corporate skin and reconnect to his inner poet; she needs to forget getting dumped then ignored and deal with some PTSD caused by a fairly recent earthquake in Szechuan.

The acting in this film is exquisite. You can sense that both characters are fully aware of their attractions to the other so the flirting is at once calculated and earnest. Each wants to entice their ex- yet they're both scared too. What starts as a chance encounter at a scenic historic site devoted to the great Chinese poet Du Fu (where May works as a tour guide while finishing her dissertation) builds into a whirlwind courtship of sorts (accelerated by the severe time limitations of Dong-ha's business trip from South Korea). But how much passion can be rekindled in a couple of days, especially when you're dealing with a tactless business associate (a comic Kim Sang-ho) who appears to want to have an affair with May and to be best buddies with Dong-ha? Doesn't this guy understand three's a crowd?

Happily, A Good Rain Knows keeps the comedic interference to a minimum and chooses instead to focus on the increasing intimacy of its two leads. Since most of the movie is performed in English — the two lovebirds met previously while undergraduates in the United States — this little film feels primed for a bigger American audience. If this modest review can help in that regard, I can consider my good deed as done for the day. You can call me your online movie matchmaker.

The Divine Move: Go Ahead and Hit Me Again

In the iEra, the nerds may have risen to power but they still don't know how to take a punch or land a roundhouse kick. So when a poorly-groomed gamer (Jung Woo-sung) whose specialty is Go ends up unjustly sentenced to the slammer, all he wants in exchange for giving master boardgame tips to his jailer is to receive ongoing martial arts training from his fellow convicts so he can kick some serious ass when he gets out. The prison fighting lessons in The Divine Move are built around the philosophy that good fighters must be beat up to learn how to beat up others. Sound crazy? Well, my grandfather took a similar approach with my father and it worked for my dad so I had no reason to doubt that it would work here too.

When you see Jung remove his shirt during one of his final prison brawls, you'll likely gasp at how effective such training can be. The actor is shredded to a point that makes you think this prison comes with a nutritionist/dietician. His character hasn't let his Go skills deteriorate while in the big house either. As luck would have it, he's sequestered next to a blind genius of Go whenever he ends up in solitary confinement; the two square off by tapping out moves through the wall. Further luck: Someone's left behind some chalk. And so he's a Go graffiti artist. He's a street-style fighter. He's an uncharted player. Plus he's a master networker.

That last talent allows him to entice a fine crew to exact his grand revenge, my favorite of the lot being a one-handed techie (Ahn Kil-kang) who has a nice variety of attachable parts including a hammer for self-defense. These are nerds who are no longer satisfied with outwitting former tormentors. They want blood on their knuckles, not just on their hands. Those jerks who killed our hero's brother (Kim Myeong-soo) are going to get iced, one (Lee Beom-su) quite literally in a freezer showdown. Getting the girl (Lee Si-young) — a master Go player herself — is just Cho Beom-gu's fantasy fulfillment for all the nerdy gamers watching the movie. Cool with me!

Mutt Boy: A Howl of Despair

Let's start with a scene near the end of Kwak Kyung-taek's despairingly watchable Mutt Boy. Specifically, the prison fight scene. The one involving Cheol-min (Jung Woo-sung) and his mortal enemy Jin-mook (Kim Jeong-tae) -- the same Jin-mook who had Cheol-min's pet German shepherd killed then fed to the school's soccer team when the two boys were in high school. That Jin-mook. That despicable, quite unlikable, sick and twisted jerk.

Paired together at last for the ultimate cage match, the eponymous "Mutt Boy" and the meanie strip down to their skivvies -- tighty whities for the hero; black panties for the baddie, of course -- and take to fisticuffs (while wearing, for some unfathomable reason, gags). Free to fight without interruption, they punch mercilessly and without strategy. They don't block. They don't dodge. They just punch and punch and punch. And then when they're done with punching, they wrestle. And then they roll around and grapple and neck lock, all while wearing their symbolic undies.

The fellow prisoners are excited at first, then they grow weary because the fight goes on so long, and then some get excited again when it's over, even if it doesn't feel like an outright victory. The same can be said about Cheol-min's relationship with his adopted sister and love interest Jeong-ae (Uhm Ji-won). They fight. They wear each other out. He kind of wins but it doesn't feel like a victory. Same for his relationship with his chief of police dad (Kim Kap-su). Fight. Win. Non-victory. Same with the movie. It wears you down, wins you over, but you don't leave feeling good that about it. But you have to admit that it won. Ding. Ding. Ding.

If they handed out awards for weirdest performance, then for the year of 2003, Jung would definitely get it here for playing the slack-jawed, shat-upon dimwit who against all odds gets to helm his own gang and win over the ladies. His isn't a Cinderella story though. He was made to be miserable. He's got love, family, friends, a job, a roof over his head, looks, a wicked right hook, and potentially a new dog at the end but I wouldn't trade places with him for the world.

Daisy: She Loves Him Even Though He's Not Really Him

Are director Lau Wa-keung and his trio of screenwriters aspiring for super-heightened-naturalism with his romance-turned-spy-caper Daisy? Their movie sure takes the old maxim "Truth is stranger than fiction" at face value. For with nary an ironic wink or a melodramatic scream, this one keeps getting stranger and stranger as its story gets more and more complex. How did this happen? On their own, the characters are plausible if incompatible.

First up is Hye-young (Jun Gianna), a street artist who paints daisies as her humble homage to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. She lives with her grandfather at an antique shop in Amsterdam, favors the knit hat and layered clothing that proclaims "Bohemian," and sketches charcoal portraits in the town square despite having access to an enormous warehouse for painting oils and a date set for her (first?) solo gallery exhibit. If she lived in Paris, she'd smoke Gauloises; if she lived in NYC, she'd have needle-marks. You know the type.

Next up is Jeong-woo (Lee Seung-jae), an Interpol cop who's committed to busting crime rings at any cost. He's what you might call a noble opportunist. And so he uses Hye-young as a cover for monitoring drug trafficking. Then he seizes his chance to seduce her when she mistakes him for someone else. He's not a cad per se. But it feels as though he's in an espionage pic, not a romance, even after he confesses all after she's lost her voice from a gun shot wound that he blames on himself. (Since she can't speak, it's hard to say whether she accepts his apology.)

Finally, there's the assassin (Jung Woo-sung): Jeong-woo would love to catch him; Hye-young would love to marry him. Except for one thing... He's neither the target of Jeong-woo's investigation nor the lover of Hye-young's dreams. He's one of those stalker-boyfriend-criminal types, the guy who watches his prey clandestinely, courts her secretively, coerces her into a relationship by making her get into his car when she's mute, then ends up causing her death inadvertently. An ideal he is not. And then there's his profession: killing people. Need we say more?

For a good long while, Hye-young believes Jeong-woo is the secret admirer who's actually the assassin then she thinks that her lover-assassin has killed her lover-impostor. She's wrong on both counts. If she hadn't forfeited learning sign language and opted to spend the rest of her life communicating through index cards with common phrases on them, maybe she would've figured out her reality faster. Maybe she wouldn't be dead. And Jeong-woo wouldn't be dead. Maybe the assassin wouldn't be single either and left with a painting now splattered with his loved one's blood.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird: Let's Assume You Can Drawl in Korean

The Ramen Western, like its forebear the Spaghetti Western, fetishizes the genre. All the period details -- the opium pipes, the sweeping leather coats, the aviator goggles, even the rotten teeth -- don't ground the action in reality. They tickle us with their particularity. That's especially true in Kim Ji-woon's vintage piece of filmmaking The Good, the Bad, the Weird. Here actors Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun, and Jung Woo-sung seem to be playing cowboys in a tribute to a Sergio Leone homage more than performing in a movie indebted to John Ford or Sam Peckinpah. Consider this flick a hall of tarnished, sometimes cracked mirrors reflecting dusty cowboy hats, galloping horses and a big Montana sky. You'll be as pleased when you get the expected (like the climactic battle involving cannons, the Japanese militia, and scores of rebels on a desert landscape) as the unexpected (Song absurdly running around with a diving helmet straight out of Jules Verne). There's plenty of blood -- some of it splattering on the camera lens -- and more than a little sadism (one stabbing scene leading to the slicing off of a finger is particularly gruesome). Neither ever feels gratuitous. Much of it's pretty fun.

Sad Movie: Your Life Is Going Down, Down, Down, Down, Down

What strikes you as the most pathetic? A young boy (Yeo Jin-gu) who wishes his mother (Yum Jung-ah) would stay sick since she's so much nicer since she's been hospitalized? An unemployed guy (Cha Tae-hyun) who makes money getting punched at the local gym? A young woman (Shin Min-a) who won't take off the head of her Raggedy Ann costume because her face is badly burned? Or a woman (Lim Su-jeong) who can't get a marriage proposal from her firefighter-boyfriend (Jung Woo-sung)? Before you decide, please consider the potential for things to get much worse. Indeed, director Kwon Jong-kwan's bittersweet Sad Movie sets up these four woeful tales then intertwines them as he has them race towards the bottom of a pretty deep well of sorrow. So while the boy's mother will get better (temporarily), and the jobless dude will become an entrepreneur (of sorts), no one will escape the cruel hand of fate. See life as tough today? Just wait for tomorrow! I suppose a few of the characters learn something about loving others and accepting themselves while experiencing their personal tragedies but they don't seem better people for it, only bruised. Picture the ways your life can go wrong. Now live it. Or don't think about it and live for today.

The Restless: The Official Language of Purgatory Is Mumbo Jumbo

Ah, the weird logic of fantasy worlds. In the Midheaven of The Restless, for instance, the recently departed pray to be reincarnated in human form instead of heading directly for those Pearly Gates. Guess Heaven isn't all it's cracked up to be. Or maybe that magical bath they take to cleanse them of memories has this Medieval crew forgetting that Nirvana was supposed to be the posthumous goal! Whatever their reasons for wanting a one-way ticket back to Planet Earth, Purgatory's in trouble. The once-serene resting place of in-transit souls now finds it's got some rebel spirits among their ranks who want to open up the doors between Earth and Inbetweenland. Sounds like desegregation to me so I'm not sure why "white reaper" So-Hwa (Kim Tae-hee) is so dead set against it. Population control? Elitism? Real estate regulations? Regardless of why or who's right and who's wrong, Yi Gwak the demon killer (Jung Woo-sung) is going to fight alongside her because he loves her as much as he loves turning bad guys into burnt marshmallows with a magic sword that only human hands can handle. Can love triumph over evil? Is it really evil to want to change the world and not just protect it? And what is it with the Korean fascination with computer-generated fireflies? Now that's weird!

Born to Kill: She's Pretty, He's Dumb, Killer Romance

Sometime way back when, there was a poor little orphan (Jung Woo-sung). He didn't have a family so a gangster took him under wing and taught him how to use a knife. He got pretty good with said blade and perfected the art of stabbing. But having led a sheltered existence, his social skills were not on par with his job skills as an assassin. He'd never been with a girl, had a drink of soju or held a meaningful conversation. So when a brazen barmaid (Shim Eun-ha) intrudes and befriends then beds him, naturally his life gets a bit topsy-turvy. Suddenly, there's someone more important than his pet monkey Chi-chi. It's hard to say whether this self-serving woman understands the mixed up manchild but she admires his motorcycle, his looks, and the stacks of cash in the refrigerator. And when she demands that he hug her if he finds her pretty, he does so then yanks off his pants to show her just how pretty. So what that she's robbed him? So what that she calls him stupid? So what that she's not too bright herself? In Jang Hyeon-su's Born to Kill (1996), this is love, tragic love, and if the happily ever after doesn't happen, that's no big disappointment. This is a gangster film.

Musa - The Warriors: Once Upon a Time in 1375 A.D.

You can call it an historical epic, a period war movie, a Medieval costume drama, or an Oriental homage to Peckinpah. You could also call it a horror flick in disguise. How's that? Well, Kim Sung-su's suspenseful Musa - The Warriors can go bucket for bucket with many a slasher film plus its combat scenes are filmed in today's reigning jittery style. Heads fly off when you least expect it; red sprays from throats, bellies, backs, eye sockets, severed limbs and mouths wrenched in pain. More thrilling than chilling, Musa - The Warriors furthermore follows a typical genre thread by connecting all carnage by way of psychotic pursuers. The runaway princess (Zhang Ziyi) rescued by Korean envoys disrespected by the Ming dynasty to which she belongs are stalked, hunted, and taunted by various bloodthirsty Mongols ready to resort to any means necessary to get the girl. Too bad for the bad guys, the general (Ju Jin-mo) has eyes for the noblewoman. Too bad for the general, so does a slave (Jung Woo-sung). By the time these two reconcile their differences, any hope for survival has been obliterated. Like any good fright flick, the one warrior to get out alive (Ahn Sung-kee) sails out alone in the shadow of hopelessness. Genius!

Phantom The Submarine - That Sinking Feeling

How much do some Koreans hate the Japanese? Enough to nuke Okinawa and then some. I'm talking some serious hate. And is this rage justified? Some say yes; one says no. As least, that's the set-up for Phantom The Submarine (1999), a political thriller that argues both for and against violence as retribution. Since the angry thesis is made not just by an insurrectionist naval captain (Choi Min-Su) but also by his entire, mutinous crew, you do wonder a little about whether the lone good guy (Jung Woo-sung) is seeing the same big picture as his shipmates. Granted, the rebel against the rebellion understands the cost of violence firsthand. (He saw his father shoot his mother then escaped the same fate once dad was popped off by the military.) Yet surely, there must be a more persuasive case to be made against starting a war than I saw my mommy and daddy slayed. After a tedious convoluted opener involving a firing squad and an Orwellian relocation program, director Min Byung-chun generates underwater tensions in claustrophic confines lit in Christmassy reds and greens. Two Japanese subs are torpedoed. Another is dragged to its death. The friendly whale swims nearby and tries to enlighten the crew by singing its ageless song but these guys would rather hear screaming than really cool music.