Shark: The Beginning: Training Gloves

Bully culture is a real phenomenon. So how do you challenge it? Do you meet might with might? Punch back? Stab in the eye? Kick in the nuts? Or do you form an alliance with someone stronger? Ideally someone with a knockout right hook? The question becomes even more pressing if you find yourself in a juvenille detention center where over half the convicts are adults. (I guess sometimes "a crime is a crime, a punishment is a punishment.") Still, my heart goes out to Cha Wo-sol, the painfully shy nerd who finds himself behind bars after being provoked by a sadistic student. He's learned early on that "Retreat" is a strategy of limited value.

And so Wo-sol (Kim Min-suk) and Mixed Martial Arts loner Do-hyun (Wi Ha-joon) forge a friendship — by way of a physical training intensive — below the barbed wire and within the chained link fence. Both understand what it means to be dealt a bad hand in life. Wo-sol was a victim throughout school; Do-hyun was incarcerated after his mother and sister were killed and he murdered their assailants in revenge. Hence they're primed to bond over pushups, pull-ups, and sit-ups performed under a "don't try, do" ethos. It all leads up to the sweatjacket being shed to reveal the ripped torso underneath. That's the end of Part 1 at least.

Part 2 inevitably puts all the lessons to the test. In Chae Johnny's Shark: The Beginning, the path to redemption or revenge or self-actualization won't be easy. In other words, there will be blood. Blood spills from the lips, the nose, the knuckles, the forehead ... If you're doubting Wo-sol's chances, keep his mentor's comments in mind: "That's your talent. Persistence." And leopard print — no matter who (Jung Won-chang) wears it — is definitely not his kryptonite.

Midnight: Silent Night, Deadly Night

We live in a world where simply watching a lone woman walk down an abandoned street at night in a low-trafficked part of town can make for an unnerving moment, irrespective of the country. Make that potential target of violence a deaf woman and the tension only increases. On such scares has Midnight been built. Kwon Oh-seung's thriller revolves around a young deaf office-worker (Jin Ki-hoo) and her deaf seamstress mother (Kim Hae-yeon), who together unwittingly interrupt a serial killer (Wi Ha-joon) during his latest slay. That's not a bad start. This is not a particularly consistent nailbiter however. To wit, when the latest victim's brother (Park Hoon) — who happens to be a security guard — confronts the killer, our boys in blue are hanging outside the precinct headquarters, chatting, then let the bad man free for fairly sketchy reasons. In what reality, do police officers trust a total stranger (with a briefcase of knives) without taking a report? Why wouldn't they rush out to track him down once they've realized they'd made a mistake? Oh, Kwon, what were you thinking?!

Perhaps Midnight is a film about police incompetence. Which gives its bloodthirsty villain free rein to stalk and torment his witnesses at home and in their oddly underpopulated neighborhood. I don't think I've ever run down so many late-night streets without a homeless person or fellow drunk in sight, regardless of the hour. Then again, I also can't explain the satisfaction that comes from people chasing each other through a maze of alleyways, regardless of the plot-holes and the potholes. But since Kwon's screenplay fails to incorporate vibrations, peripheral vision, and neighbors who can hear a young woman cry out for help, I never doubted for a moment that this "final girl" would survive. I did like the how of it though!