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.

The Silenced: Big Girls Don't Cry

"Why do you like me?" the young Shizuko (Go Won-hee) flirtatiously asks her dorm mate Yeon-duk (Park So-dam) at the all-girls boarding school where both are enrolled. "Because you're weak" is the first reply. When that doesn't suffice, "because you're weird" is the next rejoinder. I like this train of thinking. It makes sense to me! Because there is something appealing in someone who needs you (as suggested by the first answer) as well as in someone who entertains you (as suggested by the second one). The phrasing may leave something to be desired but when you ask a question like that, you deserve an answer with a little sting.

Shizuko doesn't mind the sass. At this "last chance" school where everyone's reputedly sick with something, the healthier girls are sometimes bullies. A friend who's tough is a valued commodity. As far as she herself knows, Shizuko's only crimes are having the same name as a previous student (who mysteriously) disappeared and coughing up blood (when stressed). Are those reasons to hate someone? They are to Yuka (Kong Ye-ji) who desperately wants to escape this place with its Japanese military training and creepy head mistress (Uhm Ji-won), and win a scholarship to Tokyo. You can't blame her either. After all, wouldn't you be leery of staying someplace where they fed you pills all the time and hooked you up to an IV needle for a special vitamin? What if you found out those treatments were giving you superpowers? What if those superpowers came with side effects? What if those superpowers weren't guaranteed? Tough questions, right? No one said that school would be easy.

And that goes for the staff, too. One of the counselors (Park Sung-yeon) is subjected to quite a few admonishing slaps while the one male employee (Sim Hee-seop) clearly has issues with taking orders from a woman. Well, pain is a great teacher. For pleasure, a long-stemmed cigarette holder will be provided. In The Silenced at least.

Hope: Incomplete Recovery

In Korean, the word "sowon" can be translated as either "hope" or "wish." So-won also happens to be a girl's name. That IMDb has decided to translate this bleak pic's title as Wish (not a girl's name) instead of Hope as Netflix wisely does suggests the Artificial Intelligence at the International Movie Database has yet to see the movie. Because there's nothing wishful about Hope, Lee Joon-ik's harrowing film about the rape of an eight-year-old girl and its devastating aftermath. To be fair, there's not much hopeful either but there are at least glimmers of the latter, enough to restore a little faith in humanity, although God knows we're an awful species. Our failures are great. Bring on the flood.

It's also worth mentioning that Hope is not the result of some twisted writer thinking, "What's the most horrific scenario I can concoct?" Sad to report: Kim Ji-hye based his screenplay on real events, a turn-your-stomach nightmare in which a 57-year-old man — who had a history of violence — not only sexually violated and nearly killed a young girl but then got off with a 12-year sentence because he was drunk at the time. Clearly, the American court systems aren't the only ones that make unjust rulings that fill you with rage.

So what's the point of a film like Hope? Its central story is vile, justice is not attained, the acting is — to be frank — hardly the stuff of legend. Well, for me, it was a timely reminder of the importance of making the effort, even when the options are limited. There's something incredibly moving about watching a mom (Uhm Ji-won) and dad (Sul Kyoung-gu) dress up as cartoon characters to cheer up their damaged child (Lee Re), of a co-worker (Kim Sang-ho) who lends money with no expectation of a return, of a friend (Ra Mi-ran) who brings food and tears of commiseration, of a schoolmate (Kim Do-yeob) who leaves a thoughtful note taped to your front door. There is never nothing to be done.

The Scarlet Letter: Extramarital Insanity

I first started watching Korean movies in 2004 when I covered the Fifth Annual New York Korean Film Festival, during which I saw more than a couple of movies that totally blew my mind. That was, for me, a year of embarrassing riches: Save the Green Planet, Memories of Murder, Oldboy, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring were all in the festival lineup. But there's another movie from '03 that I saw back then and that I've often omitted when reflecting on the start of my obsession with Korean cinema: Byun Hyuk's The Scarlet Letter, which strikes me now as every bit as psychologically devastating and calculatingly violent as any of the previously mentioned movies.

Perhaps my omission stems from the fact that the movie was in the subsequent year's festival (which I also covered). Perhaps it's because so much of The Scarlet Letter, while, exquisitely executed, feels at first to be simply, a really great thriller. Will detective Ki-hoon (Han Suk-kyu) discover whether or not photoshop owner Kyeong-hie (Seong Hyeon-a) bashed in her husband's head? Will Ki-hoon's wife (Uhm Ji-won) uncover the affair he's having with her best friend from college, Ga-hee (Lee Eun-ju)? It's all beautifully shot, written, paced, and acted but it's not until a late-in-the-game narrative free-fall that we're suddenly in the midst of something truly remarkable. The husband's death is revealed to be rife with complications; the affair, rooted in deception, turns extremely horrific when the two cheaters get trapped in the trunk of a car during a prank. Both Han and Lee turn in unforgettable performances, that will linger in your mind longer than you'd like them to. Illuminated by a lighter and confined to a space barely bigger than a coffin, their characters seem to exist in some weird existential no-man's-land that resurrects all past sins and promises no sure forgiveness. Han has never been better while Lee, sadly, committed suicide shortly thereafter. As final performances go, it's a stunner.

Like You Know It All: Just One Second... That May Change

There's something unconcernedly unplanned about Like You Know It All, as if director Hong Sang-soo had daily provided his actors with a single page of rushed dialogue then let them go at it for a few hours. Hong lets his actors loose on the story, lets their impulsive reactions build into something bigger, lets a random idea in the performance or an ad libbed line used to cover a flub as the guiding force for what follows. Or so it seems. Is art-house darling Gyung-nam (Kim Tae-woo) destined to clash with festival programmer Hyeon-hee (Uhm Ji-won) then doomed to reunite with a former lover (Go Hyun-jung)? These encounters hardly seem inevitable. (Who else would throw in a series of arm wrestling matches?) Instead, the realities almost come out of nowhere, as if the unexpected always lied just around the corner. So while the film starts off as a satire about a film festival, full of ass-kissing, back-stabbing, and self-congratulatory artistes -- Like You Know It All ditches that party just at the point when you likely would've grown weary of it yourself. Hong recognizes how boring life is, how repetitious, how squalid, how petty, how hilarious, how misdirected, how laughable. Oh, how wonderful he is!

I laughed a lot during Like You Know It All, perhaps more so than in Hahaha. But Like You Know It All doesn't have that latter film's clever framing device -- a boozy flashback shared by two friends recounting congruent memories. Hong's great at framing devices. Think of the films within films of Oki's Movie or Isabelle Huppert in triplicate for In Another Country. But when you come down to it, I like Hong equally -- if not better -- without the structural cleverness. Meandering, his movies feel fresh and human and vulnerable and ridiculous. Like You Know It All is hardly his most brilliant piece of filmmaking to his credit but it's brilliant all the same.

Footnote: Like You Know It All was shot on HD but is that even newsworthy anymore?

Mutt Boy: A Howl of Despair

Let's start with a scene near the end of Kwak Kyung-taek's despairingly watchable Mutt Boy. Specifically, the prison fight scene. The one involving Cheol-min (Jung Woo-sung) and his mortal enemy Jin-mook (Kim Jeong-tae) -- the same Jin-mook who had Cheol-min's pet German shepherd killed then fed to the school's soccer team when the two boys were in high school. That Jin-mook. That despicable, quite unlikable, sick and twisted jerk.

Paired together at last for the ultimate cage match, the eponymous "Mutt Boy" and the meanie strip down to their skivvies -- tighty whities for the hero; black panties for the baddie, of course -- and take to fisticuffs (while wearing, for some unfathomable reason, gags). Free to fight without interruption, they punch mercilessly and without strategy. They don't block. They don't dodge. They just punch and punch and punch. And then when they're done with punching, they wrestle. And then they roll around and grapple and neck lock, all while wearing their symbolic undies.

The fellow prisoners are excited at first, then they grow weary because the fight goes on so long, and then some get excited again when it's over, even if it doesn't feel like an outright victory. The same can be said about Cheol-min's relationship with his adopted sister and love interest Jeong-ae (Uhm Ji-won). They fight. They wear each other out. He kind of wins but it doesn't feel like a victory. Same for his relationship with his chief of police dad (Kim Kap-su). Fight. Win. Non-victory. Same with the movie. It wears you down, wins you over, but you don't leave feeling good that about it. But you have to admit that it won. Ding. Ding. Ding.

If they handed out awards for weirdest performance, then for the year of 2003, Jung would definitely get it here for playing the slack-jawed, shat-upon dimwit who against all odds gets to helm his own gang and win over the ladies. His isn't a Cinderella story though. He was made to be miserable. He's got love, family, friends, a job, a roof over his head, looks, a wicked right hook, and potentially a new dog at the end but I wouldn't trade places with him for the world.