Boss: Meth Acting

Being head honcho of a mob isn't the respectable job it used to be in Ra Hee-chan's jopok comedy Boss. High ranking gangster Soon-tae (Jo Woo-jin) would rather pursue his dream of being a chef with a restaurant franchise; recently released convict Kang-pyo (Jung Kyung-ho) fantasizes about going back to school to study tango. The only person who wants to be the new don is Pan-ho (Park Ji-hwan), the son of the old don (Lee Sung-min) but nobody wants to elect that clown. He's stupid and has anger management issues. Family lineage no longer holds the clout it once did.

Four senior hoods with an unofficial leader (Oh Dal-su) work to ensure a smooth succession for this crime organization. So does Kang-pyo's over-the-top mother Lady Hong (Gil Hae-yon). But apparently it's not as simple as letting the next-in-line step up since two out of the three nominees want nothing to do with the recently opened position. Throw in a bumbling undercover cop (Lee Kyu-hyung) with endless spyware, a disatisfied wife (Hwang Woo-seul-hye), a grifting daughter (Cho Si-yeon), and another underworld organization called The Triad, and this screenplay gets overly complicated. Would it have been such a crime to keep the story less layered? When this movie shifts from "stabbing to a catchy soundtrack" to "backstabbing to facilitate dealing meth," the "say no to drugs" message is about as ineffective as when Nancy Reagan first uttered the phrase. Except this time, we've got incredibly effective comic bits in the finale.

The Wild: Backstabbers

Betrayal is in no short supply in Kim Bong-han's The Wild. Just out-of-prison pugilist Woo-cheol (Park Sung-woong) can't trust his buddy, the crime lord Jang Do Shik (Oh Dae-hwan) who can't trust the conspiratorial druggie cop Jo Jeong-gon (Joo Suk-tae) who can't trust the philosophically inclined drug trafficker Gak-soo (Oh Dal-su) whose probably the wisest of the bunch when it comes to knowing whom you can and can't trust. He's certainly savvier than femme fatale Bom (Seo Ji-hye) who's life is especially complicated as she used to date the guy (Bin Chan Uk) whom Woo-cheol punched to death in the boxing ring seven years ago. Or did he?

The Wild is the type of movie that keeps the characters — and the audience — guessing. Whom will Woo-cheol align with? Can you ever trust a drug addict's word? Would a Korean cop throw in his badge and learn to speak Thai from an instructional paperback as prep work for international escape? Not all the questions will keep you on the edge of your seat. But one of the performances will. As a jaded North Korean whose unlawful import business is a source of fascination for all, Oh Dal-su relates street smarts and strategic thinking. Although he's hardly the lead, his character is the one any sane criminal would seek out for allegiance because he's so quick to understand motives and modus operandi. But can you trust him?

My Paparotti: Sing Out, Louise

Who you watch a movie with — or who you encounter any type of art with — can have a major impact on how you experience it. I remember hearing a casette of "Everything That Rises Must Converge" with my mother in the car after a particularly tense exchange between the two of us in the car. And let me tell you, Flannery O'Connor's bleak short story about a mother and her estranged son has probably never had a pair of more attentive listeners — destination forgotten. Happily, my viewing of Lee Jong-chan's feel-good comedy My Paparotti was a less emotionally wrought exchange. To the contrary, this cinematic success story proved effervescent when seated beside by boyfriend who corrected subtitles, mimicked opera singing, and encouraged all my sentimental reactions.

So let others roll their eyes at this underdog saga of a young troublemaker (Sung Yoo-bin) whose passion for singing provides a way out of "thug life" and under the prickly warm tutelage of a disillusioned teacher (Han Suk-kyu) whose own music career was derailed by some ill-timed tumors on his vocal cords. As for anyone ready to dismiss this film outright as fantastical nonsense, know this: My Paparotti is based on a true story! Characters like the bossy high school principal (Oh Dal-su), the kooky love interest (Kang So-ra), and the brotherly, middle-management mafioso (Cho Jin-woong) may register as pure cartoon but real life has a place for exaggeration, too, especially when it makes you feel this good.

Private Eye: Snoop Gets Major Scoop

Jang Kwang-su (Ryu Deok-hwan) is a gifted medical student who chances upon a dead body that he uses to further his skill set as a surgeon. Hong Jin-ho (Hwang Jung-min) makes his living by taking scandalous photos of women having affairs then getting those pics published in the local paper, no doubt with salacious copy. So when Jang realizes that his practice corpse is the son of a political dignitary, he naturally enlists Hong to track down the murderer. Why shouldn't a photojournalist who stalks down unfaithful spouses be able to track down a serial killer? Okay, I'll admit that's a bit of a jump but if you're willing to take it, Park Dae-min's Private Eye is highly entertaining.

In supporting roles, neither Oh Dal-su nor Yun Je-mun may be giving the performance of a lifetime as a shady military officer and an even shadier circus performer but even at 70 percent capacity, they keep the action moving. Vastly more effective is Uhm Ji-won who plays an inventor who aspires to be the greatest scientist in Korean history and in most movies would also be doubling as a love interest but here is improbably but delightfully not. She may have longings for Hong but she's infinitely more committed to astronomy and James Bond-worthy gadgetry than she is to snagging her man. Anyway, she's smart to set her sights elsewhere since so many of this movie's men aren't interested in women at all. I won't add any spoilers now but I will say that what they desire instead may not be what you first suspect.

P.S. If you're wondering why the younger trapezist looks familiar, that's because actress Kim Hyang-gi grew up to star in the Along with the Gods franchise.

Tunnel: Buried But Not Forgotten

I might be a little claustrophobic. Such was the realization I had while watching Tunnel, a relatively effective disaster pic about a kind-hearted salesman (Ha Jung-woo) whose car is buried deep in the earth after a poorly constructed tunnel suddenly collapses while he's driving home for his daughter's birthday. With boulders and dirt all around him and little more than a tin can with windows as his shelter, our Everyman is really caught between a rock and a hard place. Do you conserve energy? Do you strategize an escape? How do you stay sane alone? Such is his dilemma. At least at first. Eventually, he discovers another person and her adorable lapdog are also buried, and can be accessed via a large pipe conveniently connecting the two vehicles. Then later, I guess as further rumblings cause the rocks to realign, he's suddenly got a cave-like living-room right beside his car so he can get out an stretch, let the dog out to pee, and collect water dripping of a random bit of wire.

Why writer-director Kim Seong-hun undermines the initial, heart-stopping entrapment probably has a lot to do with how difficult it would be to sustain drama with little more than a birthday cake, two bottles of water, and a cellphone with a battery doomed to run out. Those above ground have an even harder time maintaining the drama as the rescue team leader (Oh Dal-su) drills a hole in the wrong location (couldn't they have pinpointed the location of the cellphone?) and the well-meaning wife (Bae Doona) sniffles, sulks, and fries eggs. But here's the thing with B-movies about life-threatening disasters. They don't have to be perfect to be perfectly fun.

What a disaster movie needs to do is pick a catastrophe and run with it. Pandora did it with a nuclear power plant malfunction, The Tower with a skyscraper going up in flames, and Tidal Wave with... well you can guess this one on your own can't you? Generally speaking the title gives it away. Next up: Flu!

Veteran: A Movie for the Resistance Movement

You tend to think of action movies as exaggerating dramatic conflicts as a way to heighten entertainment value but when you consider the level of corruption currently on display by today's American President and the sycophantic, morally bankrupt Republican party in both houses of Congress, it seems almost impossible to one-up the institutionalized rapacity, mendacity, racism, and sexism broadcast nightly on the network news. In other words, the grifter's world portrayed in Ryoo Seung-wan's Veteran comes across at this moment in history as unbelievably quaint. Viewed the year it came out — two years ago in 2015 — I'm guessing, I would've observed the bloodthirsty, sadistic son (Yoo Ah-in) of an unscrupulous businessman (Song Young-chang) who more or less gets away with murder thanks to ties to high ranking officials in the police department and judicial system as not so much realistic as illustrative. Now I know better.

I've no doubt that our elected officials, military personnel, government appointees, and business boardrooms are riddled with mercenary, amoral, self-serving racists from the top on down. I'm not saying everyone is a bad apple; I'm saying the rot is ubiquitous. Which is why good cops like Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min), his social-worker wife (Jin Kyung), and his immediate supervisor (Oh Dal-su) are so important to see in the movies. I also think the movie is pretty accurate in showing that the only way people change is when their personal circle is affected. The police chief (Chun Ho-jin) is probably taking pay-outs or at the very least caving under pressure from above but once a rookie detective (Kim Shi-hoo) gets stabbed, his loyalty to his men comes to the fore. I guess some people need to feel threatened to take action. Well, feel threatened then. And then resist, resist, resist.

Footnote: Don't miss Ma Dong-seok's all-too-brief cameo when he steps out of a crowd during the final fight between the movie's hero and villain.

The Attorney: Let Justice Reign

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's life was certainly worthy of a movie. The youngest of five kids in a poor, small-town family, he often had to leave school to help out at home. Despite never going to college, Roh passed the bar and became not just a self-taught lawyer but a judge, although it was in the former capacity that he did the civil rights work that became the core of his career. Eventually he was elected to the highest office in the land, at which point he was indicted then reinstated. After leaving that office, he was embroiled in a few controversies around bribery and political corruption. Eventually, he committed suicide by jumping off a mountain. That's a pretty compelling life story!

Yang Woo-seok's The Attorney doesn't follow that biography to the letter of the law but even though the lead character is named Park Byung-ho (Song Kang-ho), and his backstory is somewhat recast as that of an apolitical opportunist who has an ennobling epiphany about his profession when the faultless son (Yim Si-wan) of a big-hearted cafe-owner (Kim Yeong-ae) is illegally held prisoner and tortured for being part of a harmless book-reading group, we know this is about Roh. But stripped of his official identity, the movie also allows us to embrace Roh's accomplishments without being burdened with the sad details that followed his ascent to the presidency. All of this helps make The Attorney a feel-good story.

We like seeing the self-taught litigator outwit his snobby colleagues to become a successful self-made businessman. We like seeing him move into an apartment that he helped to build back in the days when he was doing construction to make ends meet. We like seeing him rise to the occasion when injustice suddenly pops up in his inner circle. And we love his refusal to compromise when the insider deals are offered as if justice could be meted out that way by a stuffy judge (Song Young-chang) with no conscience! That may be the way, people like Park's greedy sidekick (Oh Dal-su) and his stone-faced nemesis (Kwak Do-won) want things to go, but in this Capra-esque tale, no can do!

A Tale of Legendary Libido: Dick Jokes and Slowpokes

Jeon Soo-kyeong stars in a number of empty-headed movies but whenever there's a vacuum, she expands to fill it up. In the middling comedy Little Black Dress, she's a hack writer dropping zingers like the best of screwball Hollywood's peroxide blondes. In the even worse The Perfect Couple, she plays an amoral journalist whose mastery of slapstick is equally vintage. This time around in the raunch romp A Tale of Legendary Libido, Jeon plays a lecherous bar owner who's one of many townswomen who go from ridiculing rice-cake street-peddlar Byeon (Bong Tae-gyu) for having a small penis to pining for his shlong once it's miraculously enlarged. Amid sight gags of cascading pee-streams and Three Stooges-style violence [like when Byeon has a fire on his crotch stomped out by his brother (Oh Dal-su)], Jeon milks the comedy for all its worth. As per usual, she doesn't have many lines but she gives great reaction-face and when she gets a moment to sing, she sends chills up and down your spine.

Bong isn't quite as effective at making the most out of a little. As the bumpkin cursed with a tiny dick, he's a bit clueless and so emotionally scarred by his tryst with a cackling, nymphomanical harridan (Yoon Yeo-jeong) that instead of giving us permission to laugh at him, we're stuck feeling pity at first, and indifference soon after. Later, he doesn't make the most out of a lot either. Magically transformed into the neighborhood stud, he's just as sullen and just as dull. You never witness his delight in finally being hung. You never find satisfaction in watching him over-pleasure women who spurned him in the past. His heart (and his hard-on) ultimately belongs to another (Kim Sin-ah) -- a nearly brainless former sex slave whose sad history is unexplored and whose skill at synchronized swimming is unexplained. As sex comedies go, writer-director Shin Han-sol's A Tale of Legendary Libido barely gets to first base. It has the feel of a comedy at most.