Live Stream: Snuff for the 21st Century

In a world that's making wrong choices left and right lately, putting a protagonist like Live Stream's Dong-joo (Park Sun-ho) front and center makes absolute sense. You can't watch his poor judgment and think "No one would would do that" even if he can't make a correct decision to save his own life (or the life of anyone else either). And so when the anonymous sleazy host (Park Sung-woong) of a sicko streaming show roofies Dong-joo's girlfriend (Kim Hee-jung), Dong-joo keeps making poor choices while trying to save her. He repeatedly calls his endangered lover to warn her instead of texting her when she stops picking up her phone. He curses at the predator instead of getting info that would help identify her whereabouts. He fails to explain the full scope of the problem to the cops, to his sister, to his friends... All of which makes you realize there's a perfectly good reason why this perpetually unemployed 20-something is getting nowhere in his job interviews. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But dumb isn't the worst quality a person can have. Consider his best friend Joon-ha (Kim Kyun-ha) who's not only unintelligent but unkind and untrustworthy. He'll open the door to strangers. He'll advocate jilting the doped young woman instead of rallying to her defense. He could go to the cops himself! At one point, they're literally outside the apartment. But no... he doesn't even protect the other best friend when the baseball bat comes out. It's not that kind of a movie. This one's about the predictable plot twist in Act III. Because we're not that dumb! Even if we missed the bigger plot twist after that. Because we're not that smart either.

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?

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.