Humint: Human Intelligence Vs. Meth and Sex-Trafficking

"If you open fire, there's no turning back."

That's the kind of statement that would immediately be followed by gunshots in an American movie but in the Korean pic Humint, Manager Zo (Zo In-sung) opts to follow orders by turning his pistol into a bludgeon so he can singlehandedly take out a gang of thugs while also rescuing drug-addicted sex slave Soo-rin (Joo Bo-bi). But has he actually saved her from the jaws of death? Hint: Pretty early on, Ryoo Seung-wan's crime flick refuses to adhere to the standard formula. Even the setting for this human-trafficking and meth-dealing thriller is out there: Russia's Vladivostok.

It's also got two dueling heroes instead of one: The other is North Korean operative Park Geon (Park Jeong-min) who's getting into all kind of trouble for his double agent girl Seon-hwa (Shin Sae-kyeong). Their most visible enemy is franky iconic: a bleached blond Russian pimp (Robert Maaser) who wears a fabulous striped fur coat and keeps his captured women in bulletproof glass cases on wheels. This movie excels whenever it kicks into action mode, whether its martial arts or gunfire. But initially there are too many long stretches without punches, bullets or car chases. That one fight involving Agent Im (Jeong Eu-gene) and Park slamming into the railings of a multi-level staircase is worth the price of admission alone...or in this case, Netflix streaming. The prolonged final shootout is killer, too!

Escape from Mogadishu: North and South Alliances in Africa

Aside from BTS and Bong Joon-ho, most Americans probably don't consider South Korea a major player on the world stage. As for North Korea, they've been designated as a longshot threat run by an insane leader with a hot temper and nuclear weaponry. I don't know if such hierarchical political views of the earth do us well. We all occupy the same planet and wars between two nations can assume global importance soon enough. Israel and Palestine, anyone? In truth, the international conflicts, genocides, uprisings and dictatorships concern us all. As Toni Morrison once put it: "The function of freedom is to free someone else." If we're not moved by the decimation in the Middle East, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Ukraine, how civilized are we really? And so, a movie like Escape from Mogadishu, about South and North Korean diplomats working together to find safe harbor amid a civilian rebellion in Somalia has plenty to say about governance, negotiations, police brutality, children with guns...

As the South's Ambassador Han, Kim Yoon-seok is morally slippery but well-intentioned. As his stoic ounterpart Ambassador Rim, Huh Joon-ho brings a respectfulness not always accorded the neighbors from the North. (Each has a hot-headed assistant played by Zo In-sung and Koo Kyo-hwan respectively.) Once the two sides team up (seeking assistance from Italy and Egypt, not the U.S. and China by the way), Ryu Seung-wan's historical drama really gets cooking. I don't know whether the fleeing Koreans really wrote blood types on their children's arms or bulletproofed their cars by duct-taping hardcover books on the hood but it sure leads to one of the most exhilarating getaways in recent memory. Which isn't to say the survivors have escaped everything. Not by a long shot. And that acknowledgment makes Escape from Mogadishu not just good but very good.

A Dirty Carnival: How Do You Say Brando in Korean?

If the only Korean movie you ever saw was A Dirty Carnival (and frankly you could do a lot worse), you'd probably think to yourself, "Oh, I get it. Korea is the Italy of the Orient." This would be of course because you'd never set foot in Korea (or Italy) and had founded your interpretation on the films of Francis Ford Coppola and a passing knowledge of both countries' cuisines. And it's not just that A Dirty Carnival is so clearly an homage to the Godfather trilogy with its electrifying depictions of violence, its detailed deconstruction of family dynamics, and its paranoid portrayal of working for the syndicate. Once you engage in Korean-Italian associations, you realize how much the two nations have in common: noodles, a shoe fetish, a sense of pageantry for funerals, a love of public singing and drinking, even the art of film-making. If Yu Ha's mafia epic feels Italian (or at least Italian-American), it's because on some level that's what it wants to be. You can easily imagine Talia Shire cast as the sickly girlfriend played by Lee Bo-young, Al Pacino in the role of Zo In-sung's overly ambitious gangster and Brando in the role of the mafia don (ably embodied by Chun Ho-jin). Re-cast to your heart's content, people. A Dirty Carnival remains great on its own terms because the substitutions or cross-cultural counterparts never feel like inferior replacements. They feel like they demand respect. You respect what inspired it? You'll respect this, too.