The General's Mustache: A Novel Twist

Life is a mystery. Oh wait! I'm getting ahead of myself. Who killed photojournalist Kim Chul-woon (Shin Seong-il) before he could finish writing his parable of a novel? That's the supposed mystery in The General's Mustache, a movie that's not too worried about solving its principal crime. That's because the elusive nature of life keeps distracting our two lead investigators, Detective Park (Kim Seung-ho) and his young partner (Kim Seong-ok), an aspiring ladies' man. So while this procedural pair may grill the dead man's ex-girlfriend Shin-hye (Yoon Jeong-hee) and his landlady and his mother, they're also asking themselves what constitutes a relationship and what justifies a breakup. And when they reflect on the life of the girlfriend's father, about the very nature of faith and religion and friendship. Deep, baby, deep.

It's hard to crack a murder case — or establish the cause of a suicide if that's what's going on — when you keep getting swept up in existential questions or being distracted by the potential legacy of a childhood accident that left a forehead scar. Luckily for us, the philosophizing in The General's Mustache is exactly what makes this movie such a treat. Director Lee Seong-gu's film is bursting with ideas whether he's introducing a nude model or a game of "confession," riddling about a new kite or utilizing alternate visuals like cartoons and splashy paintings to help him tell his whackadoodle story. If you can call it a story. I'd call it poetry.

Unstoppable: This Husband Is One Hard-Hitting Hero

Let's start with Unstoppable's hero. That's Dong-chul (Ma Dong-seok). He's got the eyes of a puppy dog and the body of a mack truck. That means when his practical, pretty wife Ji-soo (Song Ji-hyo) gets kidnapped to be sold into the sex slave trade, he comes out swinging. "That bro is notorious for his fist," says his sidekick Chun-sik (Park Ji-hwan) and he ain't kidding. This guy punches like a humanoid sledgehammer as he knocks out one thug after another. What's a stab wound or getting hit by an SUV to him? Nothing when it means saving his love from a greedy pimp!

So now let's talk about this movie's wacky but watchable villain. He's the diabolical Ki-tae (Kim Seong-ho), a man with an insane laugh and insaner eyes, a greedy-ass crime lord who can't imagine anything but cold hard cash as a motivator in life. "He's a crazy lunatic who thinks money can buy anything," says someone at one point. Which leads us to believe he's highly motivated since he's incredibly rich. He may have bought himself some kind of superpowers along the way too as he alone seems to be able to survive an endless array of Dong-chul's punches to the head even after emerging from a car crash. Perhaps he invested in titanium steel plates for his skull in a scene that mistakenly got cut.

Together these two are engaged in a fight to the finish. Each has his memorable BFFs — a mulleted private eye (Kim Min-jae) for one; a weasel-y chauffeur (Lee Sung-woo) for the other — but the joys of Kim Min-ho's fast-paced thriller are really those that come with watching a hunky, working class hero beat up the big (Park Gwang-jae), the bad, and the beautiful. To paraphrase a well-known boxing phrase: May the best man win...repeatedly.

Fun Fact: The movie poster's truth-in-advertising tag line is "The beast has been released."