Perfect Proposal: 21st Century Noir

One of the things I like about the thriller Perfect Proposal is that our femme fatale Ji-yeon (Lim Soo-jung) isn't the villain. She's more like a victim who's also a heroine. That's because she's not calling the shots for most of Yun Je-gu's effective thriller; she's following a plan laid out by soulless mastermind Sung-yeol (Yoo Yeon-seok). Distracted by the looks of her money-hungry mentor, Ji-yeon is generally unaware that she's being played despite being pretty astute on how to play the game. The objective is this: Get rich asshole Yoo-mi (Lee Kyoung-young) to marry you so you can access all his money. It's a classic noir scenario, made from a mold that's as true to the genre as Double Indemnity and Black Widow.

But what I really enjoyed about Perfect Proposal is how the leading lady is made less attractive instead of more so when she's put in position to seduce "the boss." When we first meet Jiy-yeon, she's a broke-but-lively, long-haired barmaid who her customers clearly adore. When she boards the yacht to do the dirty work, she's been given a corporate bob and a wardrobe that looks as though she's middle management with aspirations but a limited budget. Her new look makes you believe that she could get fooled and do dumb things and fall for a guy based on how he looks in a bathing suit. I fell for this movie, in part, because of that.

Gentleman: No One Is Who You Think They Are

I'm sensing a new genre emerging in movies. Let's call it "liar noir." These new crime pics are modeled after The Usual Suspects, a film in which the action which we see on screen isn't necessarily what happened at all. To the contrary, in movies like Kim Kyung Won's Gentleman (which I saw Sunday) and Yoon Jong-seok's Confession (which I saw a few weeks ago), we're presented with seedy, twisting narratives, only to learn that the tellers are fabricating the stories and what actually transpired is something else...partially. In both cases, that revisionism works against the overall picture. Because you never know if another level of deceit is going to emerge and the explanation, disputed. You're also left to wonder why you've spent the last hour hearing a made-up tale.

No fan of The Usual Suspects myself, I conjecture that this mode of storytelling is the direct result of living in a culture in which facts are repeatedly disputed, falsehoods promoted, videos doctored, and testimonies reneged. As a mirror of reality, Gentleman is not without interest. But as a movie-going experience, I'm left unsatisfied. Ju Ji-hoon is the private detective duped into being a stooge framed for a possible murder. Park Sung-woong is the amoral powerbroker who hustles on the market and markets unsuspecting women. Choi Sung Eun is the indefatigable prosecutor who isn't afraid to take on society's higher-ups. All are good. That is, if that's who they are.

Forever With You: Two Men, Two Women, Innumerable Problems

It takes a certain level of confidence to start a film off with an extended take of three children silently building a dirt fort outside a prison. (Not even credits are happening!) It takes an even greater boldness to have a handful of adults exaggeratedly act like children in a series of flashbacks for the first quarter of your movie. But anyone who's seen Stray Bullet is bound to come to Forever With You with the belief that director Yoo Hyun-mok's risky choices will deliver a pay off. They're not wrong. Forever With You fairly teems with stageworthy compositions and an overall sense of mystery. If it's no Aimless Bullet, it's surely a stepping stone to get there.

An earlier flick in Yoo's oeuvre, Forever With You is more moody melodrama than tragic thriller: Its two adjoining love triangles feature a harmonica-playing gangster (Choi Bong), a shopgirl-turned-mob-wife (Do Kum-bong), a shady businesswoman (actor unknown), and a pitiable exconvict (Lee Yong) who in five packed days will discover that the world has largely left him behind after ten years in the slammer. (Although there is that matter of paternity regarding one nine-year-old girl...)

The Midnight Sun: The Kidnapped Son

Neo-noir film wasn't just a thing in the U.S.A. during the 1970s. South Korea had its own thing going on too if Lee Man-hui's The Midnight Sun is any indication, a rock-solid, dirty-noble-cop movie in which our antihero is a cranky commander with a short temper, a detached attitude, and some sort of medical condition that requires him to drink an unappetizing brown liquid out of a warmed-up baby bottle. The primary crimes that he's currently dealing with are a spate of motorcycle robberies involving a young woman who rarely isn't wearing a red mini-dress, and a grieving, heartbroken kidnapper who has targeted the cop's troublemaking son as his mark. Will the boss-cop nab the thieving lovers and prevent his own child's murder before he wins that upcoming departmental award? The suspense is pretty thick in The Midnight Sun so you're never totally sure until the dual finale arrives and it's so full of outlandish twists and turns that you'd likely dub this film improbable if it weren't so damned enjoyably crazy.

Indeed you'll cut this flick a lot of slack because it's so well paced and populated by so many entertaining secondary characters like a romantic police officer who's courting his supervisor's standoffish, tour-guide sister-in-law; a self-supporting orphan (with a pet squirrel) who's searching for his one living sibling; and a tormented ex-con who can't keep his sunglasses on straight or disguise his voice for the life of him. Another charm? The flick also has that strange Kodachrome palette that defined a generation of film and feels like a nostalgic Instagram filter. Of such tints are dreams made.

Man on High Heels: True Identity

Occasionally, people tell me that Koreans are more conservative than Americans when it comes to LGBTQ issues but I sometimes wonder if that's the truth. Admittedly, my doubts are based on what I glean from my weekly screening of films but even so, I honestly believe that movies reflect our views as a culture, at least to some point. Which brings me to writer-director Jang Jin's Man on High Heels, a 2014 action pic in which the lead detective (Cha Seung-won) is a trans cop who would like to retire and fully transition to being a woman. To its credit, this neo-noir takes its hero seriously: Ji-wook is somewhat of an institutionally-sanctioned vigilante, a kind of Dirty Harry type who also happens to be struggling with gender identity. Unable to imagine continuing a career in the police department post-op, the department's fiercest officer has visions of escaping to a new life.

The catch, as everyone knows, is you can't leave your past behind fully. The sister (E. Som) of your childhood sweetheart could reappear; the brother of a crime boss you landed in the hospital could develop a bit of a crush on you; you might even suspect your young partner (Go Kyung-pyo) of loving you whatever physical form you take — male or female. As to that one potential mentor (Lee Yong-yeo) who's gone through all the surgeries and then some, she's hardly an enlightened. You might consult her about picking out a sparkly dress for the disco. Beyond that? Pretty doubtful.

Alongside this psychological portrait within in Man on High Heels, the hand-to-hand combat is fantastic; the repeated knives to the gut are repeatedly harrowing. I especially appreciated how the ex-marine Ji-wook's macho physical prowess is explained as overcompensation. Sure there are some weird gender-identity signifiers — like the raised pinkie glimpsed holding a tea cup — but this movie proved much better than I'd expected despite somewhat of a cop-out ending.