The Distributors: One Bad Thing After Another

There's something pleasurably voyeuristic about The Distributors, Hong Seok-Ku's crackerjack thriller about a teacher (Park Sung-hoon) whose future plans for marrying rich are sabotaged when he's rufied at a club then filmed nude, barking like a dog for two VIP girls. But you don't feel bad for him. Because he's done the same thing more or less — with his fiance (Kim So-eun), in fact — and he's recently given a pass to two students who are pretty much going down the same road. So I, for one, didn't mind seeing his life fall apart. Piece by piece. Plus, he lies so much that, while his motives are plausible, you also know that his character is basically shit. So if he's not the hero, what is this?

Can a movie work if it's the extended comeuppance of a bad guy? Is there anything this shady high school teacher could do that would provide him with redemption? Perhaps. There are two routes available: One would involve him truly owning his misdeeds then making amends; the other would be to show another character who is even more despicable than him, like the guy who videotapes a nerdy male student (Lee Hyun-so) acting like a girl while masturbating then gets that same guy to be his stooge. Lest you think The Distributors is strictly exploitation with its clueless sex-cam workers and remorseless amateur pornographers, let me set you straight. This cautionary tale does a really good job of illustrating how our collective cultural failure to hold people accountable for their actions creates a brutal domino effect as one forgiven bad act begets another.

Entangled: Whose Death Is It Anyway?

What makes for an unhappy family? My relationship to my parents is complicated. One brother I talk to weekly; the other, yearly at best. Both my brothers are divorced with kids. I wouldn't say my childhood was rosy but I wouldn't say it was terrible either. Do most of us see our upbringing as typical despite all the little variations and kinks therein? Be that as it may, the Kims of Entangled are a truly cursed and miserable lot. Even when things are going relatively well at the start of Lee Don-ku's bleak kitchen-sink drama, no one seems even slightly contented although the son-in-law (Song Il-kook) is giving it his damnedest to put on his best face. But as for the anxious mother (Kim Young-ae) who's memory is slipping away, the cranky older daughter (Do Ji-won) who's having a difficult pregnancy, and the youngest (Kim So-eun) who's getting bullied by a tough classmate (Lee Min-ji) at her high school, all three are suffering, suffering, suffering. Or so they think. Because everything's about to go down right the toilet big time. They didn't know how good they had it!

Director Lee is no stranger to grim realities. His previous film Fatal was a despairing look at a guilt-ridden man seeking for redemption from a rape victim. But this time around, he's less interested in seeing how people try to repair the damage they've done (or survive the pain they've undergone) and more committed to showing how much worse things can get. Bit by bitter bit. A series of deaths — one accidental, one suicidal, two intentional — all lie ahead as does insanity, prostitution, corporal punishment, and a bloody nose. Let's just say only one major character survives and the rest are probably glad they didn't. The only "kind" character — a teacher (Kim Geun-young) who brings diapers to the new mom and worries about the younger sister going "bad" — has two scenes I think. They're like little reprieves from all the misery. Not sunshine exactly. Just a lightening of the storm. In life, I guess sometimes that will have to do when gray skies are here to stay.