The Swindlers: Worth the Wait

For awhile now, The Swindlers has been appearing whenever I narrow my Korean movie search results on Amazon down to those films rating four stars and up. Because of that, I've tried streaming this 2017 crime pic a few times before. Sadly I've never made it past the first 20 minutes. Every time I'd learn that a Ponzi scheme had left numerous people broke and driven a few to suicide. Then I'd fall asleep. I just couldn't give a hoot. Last night, I decided to stay awake and find out how this thriller could possibly merit 4.6 stars. Would Jang Chang-won's directorial debut improve if I hunkered down and stuck it out?

Yes. It does. The Swindlers improbably evolves from terminally boring to deliciously exciting. A cat and mouse game that keeps changing whose the cat and whose the mouse, the cleverly crafted plot leaves you secondguessing the young mastercrook (Hyun Bin) and the aspirational prosecutor (Yoo Ji-tae) as they keep turning the tables on each other while trying to nab the Grand Poobah of Ponzi. What they lose sight of, however, is the movie's sole con woman played by Nana. She steals the movie despite second billing. Never underestimate an underdog.

Split: Bowling for Debtors

Everyone owes something — usually lots and lots of money — in Choi Kook-hee's diverting bowling dramedy Split. The one-time Wednesday Nights league champeen (Yoo Ji-tae) is constantly racking up debts with his competitively disastrous gutter balls. The alley inheritress a.k.a. Split's spitfire love interest (Son Ye-jin) is saddled with extortion-level interest payments caused by her regretful use of the family business as collateral. Even the movie's quirky, somewhere-on-the-spectrum, potentially future lord-of-the-lanes (an excellent Lee Da-Wit) eventually owes his manipulative patron-funders around $20 for a birthday bus trip to visit the current home of his estranged mother and the mausoleum housing his deceased grandmother (who was quite a bowler herself in the city back in the day).

But by the end, Split also owes us, the audience, a few things, too, like that big important game that could go either way and is finally tipped towards victory thanks to the the young bowler's prowess and unusual methods; a romance-solidifying kiss — doesn't have to be post-coital — between the leading man and his pimping promoter; a scene in which the managress sees how bad life would be working as a hostess at the local coffee bar; a pile of Christmas presents that allow one neglected adult to heal his wounds with some help from Santa; and a drunk scene in which the same young man engages in forbidden behavior. The omission of all these scenes is perplexing because the movie actually feels like its building towards them at different times. Which isn't to say this movie is striking out. More that, it's leaves behind too many lone pins that are the marks of a less-than-perfect score.