26 Years: Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes

One South Korean counterpart for the Kent State Shooting of 1970 could be the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 during which protesting university students and sympathetic citizens were shot — in the thousands! — by a military that had basically just staged a coup following the president's assassination. Was justice served afterwards? Hardly. So Cho Geun-hyun's historical fantasy imagines four traumatized children of the revolution who have grown up eager for revenge. It's a fairly small group of rebels: a sharpshooter (Han Hye-jin), a security officer (Bae Soo-bin), a rookie cop (Im Seul-ong), an older regretful soldier (Lee Kyeong-yeong), and a food-cart owner (Jin Goo) whose face has a cut that makes him look like a Harlequin.

The source of their ire is "The Man" (Jang Gwang), a politician who's apparently impervious to criticism and living a luxurious life devoid of any real socializing. What constitutes revenge varies from person to person. Does he need to issue a formal apology? Grovel and cry? Admit his crimes and go to prison? Or die? Eventually, most of these vigilantes realize that the only one they can make happen is the last one and that's going to be a struggle. An extended flashback in cartoon reveals the horrors that led them to where they are. But where they go after the final frame is anyone's guess. America might be one option. Purgatory, another. But with a run time well over two hours, you might stop conjecturing as to what lies ahead.

The Net: The Naturalism of Politics

Director Kim Ki-duk's films have always felt intentionally abrasive to me. I don't level that comment as a complaint. I'm a huge fan of movies like Bad Guy, Arirang, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. Indeed, his agitating output feels as distinct as the slices of life from Hong Sang-soo or hyper violent thrillers of Park Chan-wook (though Kim's cinema generally lacks the veneer of either of these peers). Sometimes his "art is a hammer" aggressiveness works in his favor. But with The Net, those rough parts are working against him. The key to a great Kim film may be the cast's ability to get to its raw emotional core. But most of the actors here — especially those playing members of South Korea's spy-catching team — are giving amateurish performances that feel unrehearsed without feeling improvisational. The ham factor is high.

The one exception is Ryu Seung-beom, who as a North Korean fisherman who accidentally drifts below the 38th parallel, is so naturalistic in his performance you'd think Kim had discovered him in the exurbs of Wonsan. Even as the plot lurches into implausible places and the dialogue serves up unnecessary cliches, Ryu stays committed to the humility, confusion, and desperation of his character who just wants to be sent back home. The Net has plenty to say about the blind hypocrisy of capitalists when it comes to ideas of freedom and the better life but I caught myself shouting "That's so stupid" at the monitor more times than I'd care to admit.

Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage: Bad Dudes Are Bad News

Has the anti-hero trope run its course? Has the lone wolf who breaks all the rules morphed into the antisocial jerk who acts from a strictly self-serving interest? Are we really in the corners of assholes who don't appear to care about anyone but themselves simply because the world is shitting on them? Is charisma really enough to elevate a jerk to hero status? I grow depressed typing out these questions but I don't know what else to conclude from writer-director Lee Jeong-beom's corrupt-cop thriller Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage. It was the worst of times. It was the worst of men.

So let's concentrate on the women.

The wife (Lee Young-yoo) of the title character (Lee Sun-kyun) is pretty fascinating. She's supportive and independent, criminal without being corrupt, tough without being mean. She'd make a good lead! So would the film's ingenue (Jeon So-nee). She's got a sense of ethics, a streak of rebellion, and a decidedly unglamorous way of dressing. We don't spend nearly enough time with either of these ladies though. Instead, we watch as Jo Pil-ho mouths off, gets beats up, cheats, betrays, and poops out bullets for the 3-D laser-printed gun he's hidden in his faux arm cast. Not that this clever stratagem is going to prevent him from getting pummelled for the umpteenth time. Jo's a schmuck pretending to be an antihero who thinks he's a good guy when he's actually a boor.

Time to Hunt: Stop Following Me!

Yoon Sung-hyun's heist-gone-wrong thriller Time to Hunt takes its time building up to its catalyst crime — the robbery of an illegal gambler's den — then turns into a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game in which crazed, corrupt cop Han (Park Hae-soo) stalks the four thieves even after he's retrieved the most-valued goods. Unaware of why they're being so viciously pursued puts these criminal buddies in a more precarious position than usual because they know there's nothing they can offer to make things right. This especially baffles Joon-seok (Lee Je-hoon) who's orchestrated the crime just days after serving three years in prison. He sees a better tomorrow for him and his buddies in Taiwan but first he'll have to make sure that the narcoleptic Jang-ho (Ann Jae-hong), the momma's boy Ki-hoo (Choi Woo-sik), and insider Sang-soo (Park Jung-min) survive for two more days.

You might think that they've got a decent shot at doing so considering their impressive cache of firearms but Han is not your typical hitman. He's more like a super-villain who can take any number of shots to the body and a fall into a river, and still have more than enough energy to reload and get back to shooting his sniper again. That makes for some heart-racing chase scenes that are only enhanced by an incredibly effective soundtrack and some truly lush cinematography. Judged as pure escapist fare, Time to Hunt ranks fairly high — especially since it clocks at well over two hours and this pandemic has left me with hours to fill.

Forgotten: Who Is He, Anyway?

Much of the fun of the psychological thriller Forgotten lies in trying to piece together what's the hell's going on so if you're planning on seeing this movie any time soon for God's sake, stop reading this reaction immediately. Allow yourself to be surprised! Still there? Okay. Well, at first, I thought the younger son (Kang Ha-neul) was having a flashback during which he was going to have to relive the murder of his family. Then I thought, no, he's hallucinating stuff because of his medication...which may hurt or help his ability to see the future. Or maybe his brother (Kim Mu-yeol) really has been abducted by aliens who are going to turn him and his parents into pod people. But that too wasn't quite right. Was his whole family composed of extraterrestrials engaged in experimentation? Or were they all mad scientists who somehow were in cahoots with the police department to drive our young hero crazy and if so, why? But that wasn't it either.

I mean some things I kinda had right and some I had wrong but eventually when the truth came out — none of which involved visitors from another planet but it might as well have — the movie became a bit less exciting for me. A forgotten pill dropped under the kitchen cabinets is suddenly a lost opportunity to have a vision! Who cares if no one is exactly who you think they are because no one's ultimately going to be happy accepting who they truly are when they eventually find out. Remind anyone else too much of real life? So sue me. And get me a makeover.

High Society: Art About Art With Good Art

In today's cinematic universe, the order of the day is cynicism and corruption. No one expects characters to have noble motives and if they do, no one expects them to keep them for the duration of the film. Which is one of the surprises of Byun Hyuk's High Society, a political drama in which two deplorable leads — a callous economics professor (Park Hae-il) and a ruthless curator (Ae Soo) — start off willing to compromise everything for potential social status, only to discover a moral high ground along the way. As such, High Society is a bit of a fantasy. Who can imagine a corrupt couple finding their inner moral compass after living without one for so long? Be that as it may, it's a fantasy that satisfies because it's what we wish would happen to our culture's elites. Nothing could be better than people in power using that power for good after a lifetime of not truly giving a damn.

Not that High Society itself is a satisfying movie. Neither the representative of academia nor the art world comes across as particularly appealing. The most likable character in fact is a multimedia artist (Lee Jin-wook), who towering video installations — sometimes incorporating live performance — are truly a wonder to behold. As spectacles go, the visionary visuals within High Society make you want to stop watching the movie and track down the actual creator for more of the same. Anyone happen to know who that is? I couldn't find out when searching online.