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.

Luck-Key: So Many Favorites

The worst part of picking a favorite actor is suddenly you've demoted all the others to "not favorite" status. Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a huge fan of Song Kang-ho. But do they know that I'm also quite enamored of Yoo Hae-jin, too? If not, let me set the record straight. He may have a more uneven resume than Song but he's been unforgettably hilarious in Pirates, amusingly creepy in Fatal Intuition, and irresistible in The Secret Mission. When Yoo is on, he's nothing short of fantastic. And Luck-Key might be Yoo at his very best. The story of an amnesiac pseudo-assassin who after a knock to the head thinks he's a failed actor with a talent for carving vegetables, Lee Kae-byeok's comedy thriller finds Yoo making the most of every moment. I dare you not to adore him. Really, I dare you.

His counterpart — a suicidal puppy dog (Lee Joon) — has the flashier new life, post-injury. There's plenty of takeout, lounging in a luxury apartment, fancy clothes, and getting protective of the pretty star witness (Lim Ji-yeon) who lives on the floor below. When the two worlds converge, it's ridiculous but Yoo's so entertaining that when you learn what his real job is, you're like "Okay. Whatever. What happens next?" Maybe marriage with the EMT (Jo Yun-hie) who brought him to the ER? Don't tell me she's too young. She's 32 to his 46. Love is for risktakers!

Fatal Intuition: The Pharmacist Needs a Chill Pill

From the moment he appears on screen, you just know that actor Yoo Hae-jin is going to be the killer of Fatal Intuition. There's something sinister about the way he interacts with the young girl (Ryu Hye-young) who hangs out in his pharmacy and then he's got the right sneakers and the right type of head twitch. How could he not be the one? And who cares? Yoon Joon-Hyeong's thriller isn't that concerned with keeping us ignorant about who did it. This movie's more about whether the latest victim's older brother (Joo Won) is going to get some form of justice, either via an incompentent cop or with the help of a neuorotic psychic (Lee Yoo-young). But if you've already figured out who the killer is, you probably can predict the ending in advance too.

Don't get me wrong. Fatal Intuition isn't a slog. There's a kind of tension that inhabits this movie because you're not sure who'll die next. And you know it's going to be someone. And then someone else. Everyone's a possible victim: the simpleton (Lee Joon-hyuk) who steal young women's panties, the old guy (Son Sung-chan) getting a haircut at the senior center, the businesswoman (Son Ji-na) who hangs out with the local guys... And in a small town that's clearly in the midst of hard times, you suspect that murders aren't so easily solved. Unless you point a finger at someone new in town. And in this case, you can and you can't. No one wants to think that nice unlicensed pharmacist is evil!

Exhuma: International Exorcisms

Anyone who believe that just because I've watched all the Omen movies — including the laughable made-for-TV fourquel, the 2024 prequel, and the 2016 series Damien — means I'm a sucker for most movies involving demon possession would be... 100% correct. And so when my boyfriend asked me what Korean movie I wanted to watch next, once Exhuma had been presented as an option, I was deaf to every other candidate, awards be damned. Director-writer Jang Jae-hyun apparently shares my obsession: His 2015 fright flick The Priests concerns two holymen investigate a potential demonic assault; his 2019 follow-up concerns a cult tied to serial murders.

With Exhuma, the horror auteur largely ditches Christianity for homegrown shamanism to great effect. Choi Min-sik plays a geomancer enlisted by a matrilineal shaman (Kim Go-eun) to exorcise a familial spirit who is tormenting his descendants, across the Pacific and across three generations (including the newborn heir). The feng shui of burial gets complicated when these two and their two wingmen (Yoo Hae-jin and Lee Do-hyun) unearth a casket too big for a human and wrapped in barbed wire. What happens next? Hell breaks loose — with a decidedly Japanese pedigree. In short, Korea's efforts to get the Japanese to leave them alone now extends to the spirit world too.

The Secret Mission: Mal-Mo-E: Word Gathering

Language reflects culture, as writer-director Eom Yu-na's The Secret Mission thrllingly points out. The story of the creation of a Korean-language dictionary in defiance of Japanese rule, this historical film turns what might've been a very dusty topic — the collection of words, definitions, and regionalisms into a stirring rally cry not only for Korean independence but for the very existence of different cultures as reflections of ways of being and thinking worldwide. It's also a buddy pic in which uptight scholar Ryoo Jeong-hwan (Yoon Kye-sang), and illiterate single father Kim Pan-soo (Yoo Hae-jin) must get over their differences to acchieve the greater good.

Once they've ironed out their difference, they've got help, thankfully: a drunkard poet (Woo Hyeon), an old teacher (Kim Hong-pa), a woman (Kim Sun-young) with her husband in prison, a man with his wife in prison, and all Pan-soo friends from prison, too. Unfortunately, their leader's dad is a traitorous professor who's aligned himself with the conquerors. Don't worry: He'll get his! A sub-plot involving Pan-soo's kids — Soon-hee (Park Ye-na) and (Deok-jin) Jo Hyun-do — leads to some serious tears at the end. Why? Watch the movie and find out. You'll cry but it's worth it.

Obsessed: Repressed

I'm aware that the erotic romance Obsessed is all about a Vietnam vet have an extramarital affair with a subordinate's wife. But Kim Dae-woo's suffocatingly repressed film reminds me more of the perverse Reflections of a Golden Eye than Coming Home or The Deer Hunter. There's the way Song Seung-heon fills out his white T-shirt a la Brando; the fawning officer (On Joo-wan) whose marital sexlife is dead. There's a scene in which two men (Song and Bae Sung-woo) dance together for God's sake. I'm not struggling to locate queer subtext here! The sex scenes implicate as well: The first one finds the husband doing all the work (and it looks like work); the second one finds his mistress (Lim Ji-yeon) making all the noise while he looks detached; the third one almost looks like he's giving it to her up the butt, doggy-style.

I don't know that any of this is intentional on Kim's part but goodness, the gender-studies term-paper practically writes itself. What else are we to make of the bit when the mother-in-law tells her cheating daughter that she's glad the young woman's a cheater because the cuckolded son is nothing short of "evil"? From what I observed, he's simply ambitious in the same way that the antihero's wife is. Is smuggling the devil's work? Or am I reading too deeply? Could be. There's a terrific moment midway through the film where a dance instructor (Yoo Hae-jin) comments on the America's televised moon landing: "Damnit there's nothing. Using all that money to get to such a place." I suppose the same could say about my review. Obsessed might just be an exquisitely costumed movie without salacious subtext but definitely with a temperance message.

The Classified File: Will They Find Her in Time?

A kidnapping flick that pairs an intuitive cop with a psychic sidekick? Sign me up! Writer-director Kwak Kyung-taek's The Classified File has just the right mix of supernatural deduction and police procedural to keep fans of either form of storytelling hooked. This thriller also benefits from a pair of consistently reliable stars in its two primary roles. As the beleaguered police detective on the case, Kim Yun-seok is back to doing what he does best: playing an eternally-tired-looking policeman whose world-weary wisdom makes him an existential hero in a not-quite-ethical law enforcement department. As his temporary partner — a hard-luck fortune-teller with useful visions and elemental associations that may help solve the crime — Yoo Hae-jin looks equally overwhelmed by the world ... and the other world as well.

Based on a true story, The Classified File isn't a whodunit so much as it's a "will they rescue that little girl in time" type of tale. Kwak isn't overly preoccupied with throwing red herrings at you so you'll think the victim's father (Song Young-chang) or the criminal investigation chief (Lee Yoon-hee) may be in on the crime so much as he's giving you a sense of urgency based on the idea that as more time passes, the likelihood of the young girl surviving decreases. He's also showing how often political machinations behind the scenes get in the way of catching the criminal. Everyone wants to win a medal! That he keeps the kidnapped child unheard and unseen through much of the movie leaves us wondering if she's long dead and the whole investigation is for naught. After all, that's what the psychic's teacher said!

Intimate Strangers: Fickle iPhones

How dumb is it to play a tell-all smart phone game with your nearest and dearest? Pretty dumb if you've got anything to hide, as do all the vivacious guests at this increasingly tense housewarming party where each has foolishly agreed to share any incoming messages or calls with everyone else at the table. They're not the first to make this mistake either. Director Lee J. Q.'s Intimate Strangers was inspired by Paolo Genovese's award-winning Italian movie Perfect Strangers (2016) which already had Álex de la Iglesia's Spanish variation of 2017 to its credit. (An American remake seems inevitable!) So if these old friends in South Korea had simply had a regularly scheduled movie night, they might have avoided a series of life-changing tragedies. Instead, they're about to have their real selves exposed in a single evening.

The big-hearted plastic surgeon (Cho Jin-woong) is involved in dicey business propositions; the brittle psychiatrist (Kim Ji-soo) is estranged from her teenage daughter; a bossy lawyer (Yoo Hae-Jin) is having a virtual "fling"; an amateur poet (Yum Jung-Ah) has a serious drinking problem. Et cetera, et cetera. Not everyone feels like a liar and a cheat. A sensible veterinarian (Song Ha-yoon), though the youngest, seems the most mature of the bunch while the one stag member at dinner, a quintessential drop-out (Yoon Kyung-ho) has been living a lie. Spoiler ahead: He's gay!

Winning attributes aside, none of them is particularly likable. Perhaps that's because they're way too real! A deflating ending in which we see what their lives would have been like if they had not accepted the far-from-innocent smartphone challenge undoes much of the power of what's preceded. Is screenwriter Bae Se-yeong telling us that we're better of not being honest with each other? I would have preferred he had pursued another question he introduced early in the movie. Are women more like iPhones and men more like Androids? As for me, I oft times feel like a Blackberry.

24 Hours to Die: No Luck, No Pity

I had a strange experience while watching Kwon Hyeong-jin's 24 Hours to Die in that, at first, my heart really went out to the main character (Yoo Hae-jin), a humble, average-looking, working-class dad who's cute-as-a-button daughter (Lee Joon-ha) has the same heart ailment that killed his wife. But at some point my own heart went cold and I just didn't care anymore. As our pathetic hero's lot grew worse and worse, I continued to watch but now from a very detached point of view. God, how I disliked him. He got ripped off by a friend at poker. Too bad. He got framed by a mob boss (Kim Tae-Han) for multiple murders. Who cares? He picked up a serial killer (Jin Ku) who ended up incriminating him for a subsequent series of brutal murders. Well, he deserved it.

I wasn't mean about it. I didn't want his daughter to die. Or his truck to get a flat. Or him to get accidentally shot by a cop (Bang Yeong) with a strange nose injury hidden by bandages. I didn't care what happened to him. When, during the final, sometimes-underwater wrestling match with his nemesis whose one eye he's slashed with a shard of glass and the other, popped with his finger or thumb, and our protagonist discovered that miraculously, the bad guy's eyes have somehow come back, I assumed the freak return of the eyeballs was an editing oversight. Producers watching the dailies refused to give any more funds. The actors wouldn't return for a reshoot. Screenwriter Jang Hyung-mo considered renaming himself Alan Smithee. Unless the movie was suddenly getting poetic or trippy. Maybe the gaffe is art? Whatever the cause, I certainly welcomed the shock.

In the movie's favor is this marvelous tagline: "A cargo of corpses, a serial killer on the loose and one very unlucky driver."

Tazza: The Hidden Card: War Is a Card Game

No one's saying that you need when to know when to play the crane and when to play the butterflies in the card game Go-Stop in order to be able to follow the action in Kang Hyeong-cheol's Tazza: The Hidden Card. For someone like me (i.e., a complete ignoramus), each time a card was thrown down -- be it the cuckoo or the sake cup -- I had to wait for the collective onscreen reactions before I knew who'd won and who'd lost. Here's what I could follow.

Teen hustler De-gil (Choi Seung-hyun) only has eyes for the sassy sister (Shin Se-kyung) of a neighborhood boy (Kim In-kwon) until he sees a dancing cartoon character on the clean white panties of a femme fatale (Lee Ha-nui) who basically sells one of his kidneys for a big score which leads him to a life on the run where he encounters a small-time crook (Yoo Hae-jin) who's got big life lessons to share that come in handy when he's forced to face off with two master criminals (Kim Yun-seok and Kwak Do-won).

For clarity's sake I've edited out all the backstabbing betrayals and shaky partnerships that precede the final Go-Stop game conducted in underwear (which came as a let-down after a promise of nudity in the subtitled dialogue). By that point, you won't give a damn about how the actual card game works because you'll be too invested in the various players and how they're playing each other.

You might not know it and you'd certainly never guess it from watching the movie but Tazza: The Hidden Card is actually the follow-up to Choi Dong-hoon's immensely box office smash Tazza: The High Rollers. Though the two movies feature return performances by a couple of actors — but sadly not Kim Hye-su who was such a wonderful dragon lady in the original — the majority of the cast as well as the director (Kang Hyeong-choi) and his writing collaborators (Cho Sang-bum and Lee Ji-gang) are entirely new. If there were any major narrative callbacks to the original, I certainly didn't catch them. Nor did I miss them. Nor did I want them.

Pirates: High Seas Hilarity

Some movies are elaborate meals, some movies are pure puke, and some are complete confections. Squarely in the candy category is director Lee Seok-hoon's deliciously silly Pirates, a salt water taffy of a movie if there ever was one. To extend this sugary metaphor, Lee's tasty adventure pic manages to be chewy and colorful as it stretches plausibility beyond belief. The individual ingredients may be neither good for you nor even particularly good but the sweetness here is undeniable. And yes, you will want more. Okay, enough toothsome metaphorical talk. On to the motion picture.

Though there's a lady swashbuckler (Son Ye-jin) front and center, Pirates doesn't break new ground in comedy or gender-blind casting. To the contrary, it serves up stereotypes and cliches unapologetically. There's an evil, petty guy (Kim Tae-woo) with the requisite eyepatch, a despotic, vengeful patriarchal figure (Lee Kyeong-yeong) who drowns only to reappear having not drowned after all, a king who must learn life lessons from his patriotic servants, and a pair of mismatched lovers (Son and Kim Nam-gil) who find out they were meant for each other. Which isn't to say the film has no novelties. It abounds with them! A momma whale who bonds with a young girl? A tethered shark that can turn a sailboat into a motorboat? A drunken bandit-monk (Park Cheol-min) who drinks gasoline without consequence? Pirates is nothing if not full of quirks.

Quirks and gags, that is. A running joke about peeing in the ocean while standing next to your beloved gets increasing laughs as does a bumbling thief (a marvelous Yoo Hae-jin) whose promotions and demotions occur with every changing tide. The utter, unending preposterous is Pirates greatest asset. As stupid comedies go, this one does dumb jokes smartly. Something Lee did before with the high school comedy See You After School and the equally corny, campy Dancing Queen. But if See You After School and Dancing Queen are good examples of ridiculousness, Pirates is ridiculousness at its best. Practice makes perfekt.

Enemy at the Dead End: Murderous Thoughts Not for the Multiplex

I do think there's a good play somewhere in Enemy at the Dead End. Most of the action takes place in one setting -- a hospital room -- and it would be easy to trim the cast down to three main characters: Min-ho (Chun Ho-jin), the physically debilitated patient suffering from PTSD; Sang-up (Yoo Hae-jin), the amnesiac thug who may have killed Min-ho's wife and who occupies the neighboring bed; and Nurse Ha (Seo Hyo-rim), the ditzy orphan-nurse who is unaware that a blood feud is slowly emerging between the two men whom she is treating. If you needed to, you could always throw in a fourth actor to play a series of bit parts: Doctor, Ex-wife, Second Nurse, Hallucination... But you could probably make do with a voice offstage. Afterward, stripped down to its basic elements, Enemy at the Dead End would emerge as an effective, economical psychological thriller. Fueled by an experimental drug, the narrative would erupt with over-the-top performances that keep getting crazier and crazier without intermission.

But Enemy at the Dead End isn't a play. It's a movie. And because it's a movie, the action sometimes leaves the hospital room thereby diminishing the claustrophobia of a single setting and the bravura potential of the performances. I don't know that confining the action within four walls would have solved all this movie's problems but I'm guessing it would've helped some. Then again, it might've introduced others. Only one of the two male actors could probably sustain an unedited performance. The flashbacks would have to be replaced by exposition that could prove cumbersome. You'd probably have to rewrite the crazy doctor back story that got these two in the same hospital room to begin with. But given that Cho Owen and Kim Sang-hwa share both writing and directing credits, you'd have two people to work on rewrites and two people to work on figuring out how to make it work for a live audience when it didn't work on film.

And if Cho and Kim insist that Enemy at the Dead End should transfer to video once they've perfected the theatrical version, let it be for the small screen instead.