The Classified File: Will They Find Her in Time?

A kidnapping flick that pairs an intuitive cop with a psychic sidekick? Sign me up! Writer-director Kwak Kyung-taek's The Classified File has just the right mix of supernatural deduction and police procedural to keep fans of either form of storytelling hooked. This thriller also benefits from a pair of consistently reliable stars in its two primary roles. As the beleaguered police detective on the case, Kim Yun-seok is back to doing what he does best: playing an eternally-tired-looking policeman whose world-weary wisdom makes him an existential hero in a not-quite-ethical law enforcement department. As his temporary partner — a hard-luck fortune-teller with useful visions and elemental associations that may help solve the crime — Yoo Hae-jin looks equally overwhelmed by the world ... and the other world as well.

Based on a true story, The Classified File isn't a whodunit so much as it's a "will they rescue that little girl in time" type of tale. Kwak isn't overly preoccupied with throwing red herrings at you so you'll think the victim's father (Song Young-chang) or the criminal investigation chief (Lee Yoon-hee) may be in on the crime so much as he's giving you a sense of urgency based on the idea that as more time passes, the likelihood of the young girl surviving decreases. He's also showing how often political machinations behind the scenes get in the way of catching the criminal. Everyone wants to win a medal! That he keeps the kidnapped child unheard and unseen through much of the movie leaves us wondering if she's long dead and the whole investigation is for naught. After all, that's what the psychic's teacher said!

Dark Figure of Crime: Serial Pleasures

One of these days, I should create a top ten list of South Korean movies about serial killers. With titles like Save the Green Planet, Memories of Murder, and I Saw the Devil, it's got to be one of the most successful sub-genres in this country's cinema and contains some of my favorite thrillers of all time. A potential contender for that list is Dark Figure of Crime, Kim Tae-gyoon's engaging suspense flick about a melancholic cop (Kim Yun-seok) who matches wits with a slippery-even-while-imprisoned criminal (Ju Ji-hun) whose unreliable confessions to multiple murders disguise a master plan to get out of jail. There are a handful of other characters like a jaded prosecutor (Moon Jung-hee), a diabetic police chief (Jung Jong-joon), and a loyal partner (Jin Seon-kyu) but ultimately this film is a two-hander which, to its credit, creates a hero every bit as interesting as its dastardly villain.

Part of the reason this movie's lead investigator is so compelling is simply the casting of Kim. The camera loves this actor whether he's playing a crime boss (The Yellow Sea), a community activist with a drinking problem (Punch) or even a rodent-faced gremlin (Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard). But nothing seems to suit Kim so well as a world-weary cop, a role he'd previously nailed in The Chaser — another great serial killer pic by the way. There's so much intelligence and poignancy in Kim's timeworn face that you get an added pleasure from seeing this man, who you sense has received the short end of the stick throughout his life, ultimately aligned with good. The world needs more heroes and Kim's earnest detective here — who literally invests in the investigation with his own money — imparts a sense of good will that extends beyond the courtroom. If this widower can put his life on the line for justice, why can't we?

Sea Fog: The Ship Hits the Fan

Are newly poor people who were once flush with cash more likely to compromise their integrity in order to become rich again? That would certainly explain the strictly mercenary decision of flat-broke Captain Kang Chul-joo (Kim Yun-seok) who has chosen to smuggle Chinese emigrants of Korean heritage across the border. Once he's committed himself and his crew to this bit of political lawlessness, however, the real dastardly crimes begin. One of your passengers gets all "equal rights"? Throw him overboard. Anyone accidentally die in the fish-hold? Chop up the body and throw it into the sea for the fishies to eat. Got a mutinous engineer? You know what to do.

Because the Captain's been in the seafaring biz for so long, his crew tends to do as instructed, too, no matter how repugnant the request. Really, the only one who stands up against the Cap is Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun), a young sailor (arguably on the spectrum) who lives with his grandmother and has basically kidnapped a female passenger (Han Ye-ri) in hopes of turning her into his wife. That budding romance is one of the movie's creepiest components and the scene in which the two young not-truly-lovers end up fornicating after witnessing a murder ranks up there as one of the grossest sex scenes in Korean movie history.

That may be intentional. After all, Sea Fog's script is by auteur Bong Joon-ho and Shim Sung-bo who'd previously worked with Bong on the incredibly complex Memories of Murder. If Sea Fog isn't quite as nuanced as their previous collaboration, well what is? Plus, the shortcomings are probably due in part to this being Shim's directorial debut. And while the finale is a mess and the female characters are woefully underdeveloped, Shim fares well overall. He's recruited a strong supporting cast (Mun Seong-kun, Kim Sang-ho, Jo Kyung-sook) and cinematographer Hong Kyung-po to ensure a high level of quality on both sides of the camera. Waterlogged, this movie is not.

The Happy Life: Big Dreams Resume at 40

When you hear "midlife crisis," you tend to think "disaster, catastrophe, mess..." But this term could also mean "turning point, crossroads, watershed..." Taking stock — and coming up short — in your 40s and 50s doesn't necessarily lead to making bad choices thereafter. Drastic changes aren't inherently bad. To Hell with the status quo is a timeless dictum! After all, you could really fall in love with someone half your age and not get bilked. Or you could really reform that rock band from college and attract a new, bigger fan base that digs your new tattoos and retro sound. On such fantasies are movies, like The Happy Life, made. Not that everything is honky dory once Active Volcano reassembles. The guitarist (Jeong Jin-yeong) is woefully unemployed; the bass player (Kim Yun-seok), undervalued and overworked; the drummer (Kim Sang-ho), balding and abandoned by his wife; the lead singer (Jang Keun-suk), the son of the original frontman, grieving the recent death of his dad—who stuck with his rock 'n' roll dreams only to end up a nightclub singer!

Perhaps that's the primary charm of Choi Seok-hwan's sweet-natured screenplay. Choi isn't saying that life's problems will be solved once you tap back into the enthusiasms of youth. Choi's simply suggesting that it may be better than not doing so. You'll still be underpaid, harried, overweight, and an orphan, but your life will have meaning again. And what more can you ask of a midlife crisis than a new direction that leads that way. Sure, you may look silly covering your bald pate with a bandana or mimicking the dress code of someone young enough to be your son, but if you haven't evolved far enough to not care if some people laugh at you (or if you can't laugh at yourself yet) then this midlife crisis is simply going to send you into a tailspin, an ever-downward spiral that only stops picking up speed when it finally hits the grave. Watch director Lee Joon-ik's The Happy Life instead. Before it's too late!

Hwayi: A Monster Boy: Save the Green Mobster-in-the-Making

A crazily brilliant, intentionally twisted logic informs the mob pic Hwayi: A Monster Boy, an off-kilter sensibility that I was pretty sure I recognized about 15 minutes in. At least I hope I recognized it. I mean, could it really be that the creator of my beloved Save the Green Planet! had finally made another movie after all this time? Had that elusive director I'd long credited for my love of Korean movies finally reappeared? And is it truly possible to recognize an auteur's style that fast, based on one movie alone? Happily, the answer to every question here is YES.

Ten long years after Save the Green Planet! rocked the midnight screening of my soul, Jang Joon-hwan has returned with an exhilarating coming-of-age mafia movie in which the heir apparent (Yeo Jin-gu) must off his various adopted dads to rid himself of his inner demons. Each dad has something that makes him special: Seok-tae (Kim Yun-seok) is all tough love, Ki-tae (Jo Jin-woong) gives him driving lessons that include outrunning the police. Each dad loves Hwayi in his own special way but they’re also carrying a terrible secret, one that will make the son quite a bit less thankful for the sacrifices made.

Hellbent on uncovering that secret is a wily detective, who – much like his counterpart in Save the Green Planet! – may be the smartest guy in the room but he also as no idea that the room he's about to enter is a chamber of Hell. It’s as if Jang is saying that even when a representative of The Law is working at the top of his game with the best of intentions, the cards are stacked against him. The survival of the fittest is not the survival of the smartest. Darwinism has nothing to do with being ruthless or crafty – as one mobster (Yoo Yeon-seok), one masseuse (Woo Dong-gi), one minister (Lee Kyeong-yeong) and one mayoral candidate (Moon Seung-geun) are about to learn in short order. Life's a total crapshoot. Or better yet, a game of roulette. And in Jang's case, that's Russian roulette, my friend.

Tazza: The Hidden Card: War Is a Card Game

No one's saying that you need when to know when to play the crane and when to play the butterflies in the card game Go-Stop in order to be able to follow the action in Kang Hyeong-cheol's Tazza: The Hidden Card. For someone like me (i.e., a complete ignoramus), each time a card was thrown down -- be it the cuckoo or the sake cup -- I had to wait for the collective onscreen reactions before I knew who'd won and who'd lost. Here's what I could follow.

Teen hustler De-gil (Choi Seung-hyun) only has eyes for the sassy sister (Shin Se-kyung) of a neighborhood boy (Kim In-kwon) until he sees a dancing cartoon character on the clean white panties of a femme fatale (Lee Ha-nui) who basically sells one of his kidneys for a big score which leads him to a life on the run where he encounters a small-time crook (Yoo Hae-jin) who's got big life lessons to share that come in handy when he's forced to face off with two master criminals (Kim Yun-seok and Kwak Do-won).

For clarity's sake I've edited out all the backstabbing betrayals and shaky partnerships that precede the final Go-Stop game conducted in underwear (which came as a let-down after a promise of nudity in the subtitled dialogue). By that point, you won't give a damn about how the actual card game works because you'll be too invested in the various players and how they're playing each other.

You might not know it and you'd certainly never guess it from watching the movie but Tazza: The Hidden Card is actually the follow-up to Choi Dong-hoon's immensely box office smash Tazza: The High Rollers. Though the two movies feature return performances by a couple of actors — but sadly not Kim Hye-su who was such a wonderful dragon lady in the original — the majority of the cast as well as the director (Kang Hyeong-choi) and his writing collaborators (Cho Sang-bum and Lee Ji-gang) are entirely new. If there were any major narrative callbacks to the original, I certainly didn't catch them. Nor did I miss them. Nor did I want them.

Running Turtle: How Far Would You Go for Daddy's Little Girl?

I could make a list of all the things that made Lee Yeon-woo's 2009 blockbuster Running Turtle so enjoyable for me...and so I will.

1. It's got an incredibly likeable if beleaguered Everyman as its hero: One police officer Jo Pil-song (Kim Yun-seok) who can't win, even when he wins. Kim's perfected this type of role in movies like Punch and The Chaser. He's like an understated Song Kang-ho.

2. It's got an almost equally likeable but dangerous martial artist/escaped convict as its villain: The sadistic yet romantic Song Gi-tae (Jung Kyung Ho) whose hard to hate because he's so true to his girl (Seon Woo-seon). But don't worry. You'll hate him eventually.

3. It's got a handful of quirky secondary characters: the frizzy-haired wannabe bad boy Pyo Jae-seok (Choi Kwon) who's got a tattoo on his back just like Gi-tae but less in his brains, and a goofy martial arts instructor who's equally slow intellectually but more adept physically.

4. It's got a father-daughter relationship that shows depths of devotion without ever resorting to a rescue scene featuring a kidnapped child (Kim Ji-na). There are big stakes here but they don't necessitate seeing a kid screaming for help! (Only characters 18+ should have fingers sliced off!)

5. It's got a great ending.

I have repeatedly noted that one of the reasons that Korean crime pics tend to play more engagingly then their American counterparts is that because they rarely degenerate into preposterous shootouts in which one side has good aim and one side does not. The two guns that come into play most decisively in Running Turtle are a pepper spray guy and one that shoots rubber bullets. With no snipers in site, the action always feels like it's a battle of wills instead of ammunition. Consider this another reason for stricter gun control laws: Better movies!

Punch: Family Drama Just for Kicks

I'm predisposed to like a coming-of-age movie like Lee Han's Punch. Wan-deuk's father (Park Su-young) is a hunchbacked dwarf who likes to dance; his uncle (Kim Young-jae), a man-child who acts like a 10-year-old; his mother (Jasmine), a Filipino waitress with self-esteem issues; his homeroom teacher (Kim Yun-seok), a tough-love, community activist with a drinking problem. Growing up poor, or at best financially challenged, I too was surrounded by my own quirky extended family who, though not as colorful on the surface, were actually weird enough in their own ways for the circus-realist Punch to resonate with me on a very personal level. So much so that I'm now sitting here wondering if I'd be happier -- or at least more grounded -- today as an adult if someone had encouraged me to take martial arts to get out all my teenage frustrations when I too was 17. You could say that's why my father got me to join the Northwood High wrestling team when I was a sophomore but I didn't want to grapple so much as strike. I think, like Wan-deuk (Yoo Ah-in), I would've found greater satisfaction in kickboxing as a way to channel the rage that comes with feeling like an oddball -- Correction: Of being an oddball -- at a time when conformity is at its most crushing.

Playing the central soul-searcher, Yoo does a great job conveying his character's bewilderment at the inconsistencies of the grown-up world while discovering his own insistence to take a path not entirely delineated by those around him. (Which isn't to say he's above accepting a little guidance on occasion.) Alternately tremulous and slack-jawed, his every-teen isn't smarter than his elders; he's just electrically aware of each individualized reality. It's as if Lee and his screenwriter Kim Dong-woo aren't waxing nostalgic about adolescence as "the time before hypocrisy" so much as they're acknowledging it as an earlier time as violently chaotic as adulthood. It's an awareness available to re-experience at any time. I left Punch reconnected to mine.

The Thieves: Evidently, There Is an Oceans 14 in Asia

Although I've never seen Oceans 11, 12 or 13, Choi Dong-hoon's The Thieves strikes me as very similar to those glitzy, impeccably dressed star-studded caper pics. How much you like the movie has as much to do with how much you like the actors as you do the heist that's brought them all together. Here, you've got Kim Yun-seok (The Chaser) as a mastermind thief who assembles a crackerjack crew including Kim Hye-su (Tazza: The High Rollers) as his safe-cracker and Jun Gianna (My Sassy Girl) as a wire-walker who can break into any building. I'm less sure why he's hired Lee Jung-jae (Il Mare) as comic relief and wish he'd entrusted Kim Hae-suk (Thirst) with more to do but at least the movie has plenty of female power instead of one Julia Roberts or Catherina Zeta-Jones.

Joined by a half-dozen other shady types, these movie stars -- I mean crooks -- pool their talents in hopes of stealing the Tear of the Sun, a yellow diamond of enormous size and even greater value. (Black market estimates put its worth at around twenty million dollars.) As you can imagine, the jewel is very well-protected and given the checkered histories and double-crossing tendencies of all the criminals involved, pulling off this crime of the century isn't going to be so easy, especially when one of your partners is an undercover cop.

They also have to deal with an evil, bloodthirsty buyer (Ki Guk-seo) who seems an odd person to peddle your wares to given that he's been known to shoot the seller in order to get a better deal. But when you're trafficking in stolen goods, beggars can't be choosers. Nor can thieves. No matter how famous they are.

Postscript: I especially enjoyed seeing Shin Ha-kyun (Save the Green Planet) in the small role of the rich art collector who's always on the make with the ladies.

The Yellow Sea: If You Can Cut With It, You Can Kill With It

In The Yellow Sea, Yanji* cab-driver Ga-num (Ha Jung-woo) isn't your typical anti-hero. A gambler whose debts have driven him to agree to kill a professor (Kwak Byeong-gyoo) in Seoul, he's short on charm and lacks a moral code, however warped. Myun-ga (Kim Yun-seok), the crime boss who enlists his services, comes across as more likeable and laudable. At least initially. But after the targeted prof has been offed, everything's become so horrific — the planned assassination has domino-ed into mass murder — that Ga-num emerges as the sympathetic guy. (It's hard not to feel for a guy who got played.) Framed and uninformed, he's left to fend off Myun-ga's gang, the cops, and the thugs of Kim Tae-won (Cho Seong-ha), Myun-ga's slimy white collar counterpoint.

Na Hong-jin, who also directed the heart-racing thriller The Chaser, must have paranoia in his DNA. Once again, the thrills in The Yellow Sea come from "Somebody's after me!" scenarios; yet again the action is all pursuit/escape. As Ga-num flees Myun-ga, Kim and the cops, Kim flees and pursues Myun-ga, and Myun-ga chases and chases and chases. Many of the face-offs when someone finally catches up to someone else involve men with big kitchen knives or just-as-lethal axes hacking, stabbing, and sometimes even sawing into unlucky bodies. Many die quickly, dramatically. But the three main guys — Ga-num, Myun-ga, and Kim — bleed and survive, stopping only for the time it takes to fashion a tourniquet.

Their collective rapid recoveries push The Yellow Sea into comic book territory, where men bludgeon others with pots and pans and even the occasional animal thigh bone. Where else can a man with a twisted ankle outrun police cars and a whole squad of officers on foot? Since the superhuman powers aren't restricted to the movie's hero, fights are fair among the main three: Anyone could win. Whether anyone actually does or not is a question to answer over the many excited drinks sure to follow.

*Footnote: Yanji is a Chinese city with a predominantly Korean population.

Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard: When Life Gives You Lemons, Paint a Cool Still Life

When life gets you down, go to the movies. If you're lucky, you'll see smart escapist fare like Choi Dong-hun's Woochi and be reminded that existence is an adventure and many worlds reside in this world -- not just the oppressive one that's put you in a funk. Woochi is cinema as anti-depressant, a preposterous, uplifting fantasy about a baby-faced wizard (Kang Dong-won) who fights a rodent-faced gremlin (Kim Yun-seok) in order to protect a wooden recorder that accords its possessor universal control. As the battle between good and evil rages on, this action-adventure shuttles between opposing realities -- medieval days and modern ones, dreamscapes and nightmares -- all of them magical. Are we living in a classical watercolor, a poster for an energy drink, an elliptical eternity, a video game? Blink your eyes and whatever it was that you were living in will be gone as something disorientingly new takes its place. And since your surroundings are so unstable, follow Woochi's lead and surround yourself with cool people like a trusty sidekick who's really a dog in human form (Yu Hae-jin) and a pretty damsel-in-distress (Lim Su-jeong) who's actually a reincarnated former flame. Yes, you'll still have to deal with pesky evil spirits and unreliable gods, but at least you'll be with your friends!

The Chaser: The Kid Stays in the Crime Picture

The reveal and the capture of the serial killer come so soon in The Chaser that you might think, there's no likelihood of unrelenting tension in the hours ahead. Well, you're wrong! Director Na Hong-in and fellow screenwriters Hong Won-chan and Lee Shinho have made something more suspenseful than a standard whodunit; the mystery here isn't who did it, it's whether he'll get away with it despite his confession. What "it" is in this case is the attempted murder of a call girl (Seo Yeong-hie) whose morally compromised pimp (Kim Yun-seok) is undergoing a seismic shift inside as he searches for the lair of her last customer, a psychopath (Ha Jung-woo) held in detention by the cops. It's a wonderfully messy story with subplots involving police brutality, embezzlement, sex trafficking, auto insurance, church finances, and even a mayor who's been hit in the face with human feces. But aside from one glitch near the end in which a delightfully tough lady dick (Park Hyo-ju) inexplicably lets the murderer get away, the twists and turns of The Chaser keep you on your toes. Factor in that this is Na's first feature and an amazing performance by Kim Yoo-jeong as the prostitue's kid, and this movie is a super-impressive addition to Korean noir.

Like a Virgin: He Made It Through the Wilderness

For gay men, Madonna has long one-upped her Biblical namesake in terms of relevance. That's because the pop star and patron saint for homos provides salvation not by promising heaven later but by rescuing from hell today. In the enchanting dramedy Like a Virgin, the singer serves as a secular icon for a transgendered youth (Ryu Deok-hwan) who's struggling to maintain their dignity while pursuing a sex change operation despite the hazing of many peers, maternal abandonment (Lee Sang-a), and paternal physical abuse from an alcoholic dad (Kim Yun-seok). Whenever the situation gets a little too hairy, this kid retreats to a makeup kit and a poster of the Material Girl as if they could make the world go away until the funds were raised to attain womanhood. How this youth decides to earn the money strays far from the cliche, though: Our hero joins the high school wrestling team with the hope of winning the grand prize at the championships. Ridiculous? No more so than real life, really. Writer-directors Lee Hae-jun and Lee Hae-yeong balance the serious with the silly; anguished expressions of alienation are relieved by bathroom humor and messages of acceptance and tolerance are countered by homoerotic gags and dance routines. All this one needs is more Madonna on the soundtrack.