Big Deal: Corporate Cruelty

Choi Yun-Jin's Big Deal is a pretty scary movie. Not because there are vampires or werewolves or a mad slasher on the loose. What's wreaking havoc and causing chills are corporate overlords who have only one thing on their mind: Money. Seok Jin-woo (Son Hyeon-ju) is the nepo baby who's inherited a thriving soju empire that he jeopardizes by making foolish wagers on the golf course among other places. Choi In-beom (Lee Je-hoon) is a business strategist who recognizes the faltering company as his chance to orchestrate a merciless takeover followed by downsizing and a profitable resale. Neither character can imagine a motive outside their bank accounts.

The only one in this cutthroat world who seems to give a damn is divorced, alcholic, all-too-trusting Pyo Jong Rok (Yoo Hae-jin), a high-ranking exec who is about to learn that CEOs, lawyers, judges, journalists, account managers, and so on do not share his code of ethics. Or any code of ethics. The only rule for sleazy powerbrokers like Gordon (Byron Kim), nasty double-crossers like Koo (Choi Young-joon) or backstabbing dealmakers like Mark (Daniel C Kennedy) is win at all costs. The ends justify the meanies! To its credit, Big Deal shows that sometimes a price is paid... but its not by the monsters at the top.

The Chronicles of Evil: Double Vision

Can a movie have an identical twin? Not a clone like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, but an actual double of sorts, birthed from the same egg of an idea then evolving into something separate but remarkably similar. The kinship between The Chronicles of Evil and A Hard Day is striking. At first glance, they look like the same movie: A not-clearly-necessary cover-up that follows an accidental killing of a coincidentally bad guy leads a corrupt cop to execute a series of self-protective crimes, which in turn lead to threats to his own family's safety as well as the death of his buddy on the force. I can't speak for the histories of the screenplays, but Chronicles, which came out a year later, definitely feels like the copycat work, the lesser twin, if such a thing can be said. It's one of those cases in which you keep staring until you realize one of the two is much cuter in the end.

Which isn't to imply that Chronicles isn't doing anything to improve on the original (which was hardly a perfect thriller). Once it's done with duplicating its predecessor's central narrative, it actually does deliver some very WTF plot twists involving a gay actor (Choi Daniel) with lip gloss and addiction issues, and his murderous muse (Park Seo-joon who in his mid 20s comes across 16). Also, any opportunity to see Korean cinema's reigning teddy bear Jeong Man-sik must be embraced. He's Korea's answer to Bruce Willis, although no one's bothered to cast him in the lead yet. At least not that I know. Tell me I'm wrong! In the main role instead is Son Hyeon-ju who gives a truly strange performance that appears to be augmented by a prescription bottle of ready tears as he looks on the verge of crying for much of this film.

I hope writer-director Baek Woon-hak goes out on a limb for his next movie and does something more wholly original. But given there were twelve years between this flick and his stinky Tube, I guess we'll be waiting awhile to find out. That's okay by me. I'm no rush.

Hide and Seek: The Proper Way to Address a Murderer

One of the unforeseen but enjoyable side-effects of studying the Korean language is being able to spot when characters in Korean movies are speaking to each other with respect. And when they're not! In the serial killer thriller Hide and Seek, for example, there's a scene in which the murderer is terrorizing two children (Jeong Joon-won, Kim Soo-an) trapped in a car. Given the killer's age, expensive coat, and real estate holdings, I would've expected these two kids to speak to their attacker with greater deference. I guess the rule of thumb however is to automatically default to a more casual form of address when screaming at a murderer. I would've missed this nuance in the movie if I hadn't started taking Korean!

It could also be that writer-director Jung Huh is making an intergenerational statement in Hide and Seek. Maybe these two kids don't respect any adults because their parents are so inadequate. Their mom (Jeon Mi-seon) is a negligent whiner who lets them play in a ghetto alleyway while she yammers away with her stateside mother on the phone. Their dad (Son Hyeon-ju) is a withdrawn enigma who exhibits creepy obsessive compulsive behavior and breaks out into unprovoked violence in the middle of the night. Why speak to adults with respect when they're so messed up? Come to think of it, that's a question every generation must ask.

I'm guessing that Pyaong-hwa (Kim Ji-yeong), the pirate-patched daughter of the poor, harried mom that lives next door to the long-lost, potentially-deranged brother (Kim Won-hae) of the OCD dad, already has her own answer. From the looks of it, this little girl has taken it upon herself to is learn English -- and is taking to it quickly -- because the language doesn't require such differentiations in respectful address. She's not about to "sir" or "ma'am" anyone. Everything is casual in the US. Even, some may argue, murder.

Punch Lady: Domestic Violence Becomes a Martial Arts Match

Personally, I was hardly expecting Punch Lady, a movie about an abused wife who challenges her homicidal/pro martial-artist husband to fight in the ring, to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. And yet that's really what Kyang Hyo-jin's movie is. Which isn't to say the violent scenes in which mousy Ha-eun (To Ji-won) gets pummeled by her psychotic spouse Joo-chang (Park Sang-uk) aren't horrific. They are. As is the climactic face-off during which the two throw punches/kicks in a packed arena broadcasting nationwide. But what transpires between is loaded with silly bits that never feel inappropriate, a miracle of sorts to be honest. How'd that happen?

Part of Punch Lady's ability to stay funny so much of the time can be attributed to the central theme being neither revenge nor justice. Kyang's screenplay is really about self-discovery instead. Which isn't the same as self-transformation by the way. Again, unexpectedly, Ha-eun doesn't change from timid housewife to unstoppable fighting machine. When she enters the ring, she still flinches whenever her husband approaches. All she has are a few key moves fueled by rage. There's actually an amazing moment mid-fight when she stops just to let out a few blood-curdling screams. These are the screams of a woman furious at being treated as less than human, as being part of a legacy of abuse that dates back to her mother (who was beat by her father) and now could continue through her daughter (already a target for Joo-chang's abuse).

Ha-eun's screams jar you back to the larger reality in which women can often be treated as second-class citizens and in which spousal abuse remains a topic people still don't like to talk about first- or second-hand. You could call Punch Lady a feminist comedy if you wanted to but I'm not so sure whether it holds up on that count. Her coach Soo-hyeon (Son Hyeon-ju) is positioned as a romantic figure because he wants to be her protector, even as his mock mastery of moves is simply his mimickry of what he learned the night before at a nearby gym. Enlightened as I might be and try as I might, I couldn't resist cackling at that first training montage which isn't a feel-good, get-tough sweatfest so much as it's a comical sendup of the masochism of pushing yourself to the limit and the sadism that accompanies helping someone else do the same. And only a misogynist wouldn't love her triumphant punches in the final round.