Fist & Furious: Cut to the Knife Fight

Fist & Furious isn't worried about being too obvious. A voiceover informs us immediately that Detective Yang (Jung Doo-hong) is a good cop who's been compromised by a gambling debt. His latest partner Yoon (Kim Sa-kwon) announces, upon his arrival, that he's a newbie who owes Yang his life. [Cue substantial flashback.] These details are important to get across quickly because the dialogue is intended to framework one excellent fight sequence after another.

Neither we, nor the North Korean expat / Dongjim TV News Reporter Nam (Ryu Deok-hwan), has rarely seen the 1 versus 100 battle done so consistently effective. Yang takes on a fireside gang of thugs with the lid of a pop-top can of tuna as his weapon; Yang knife-fights a gang of thugs who run across the top of pews inside a church between slayings. To describe Yang as tough is an understatement. We literally hear him crack bones under his foot. He's also survived having a knife embedded in his head. Not so lucky is the guy who gets bashed on a guardrail after he's underestimated Yang's fury.

That aforementioned knife, by the way, once belonged to the whore-mother of Yang's nemesis, a diabolical drug-dealer named Jung (Jung Eui-gap) who's got his own score to settle. We know this because Jung tell us as much for no compelling reason. As for the far-from-helpless young women caught in the middle of the drama — two sisters played by Seo Eun-ja and Kim Hae-In — they're as much props as people. They're here to get us, and director Ha Won-jun, from Point A to Point B. And by point, I mean a knife.

Mr. Housewife: Quiz King

Unlike Mrs. Doubtfire, Yu Seon-dong's sweet-natured Mr. Housewife knows that a man doesn't need to don a dress to understand the worth of taking care of a child, cooking meals, cleaning an apartment, et cetera. Jin-man (Han Suk-kyu), the man in the apron and at the stove, takes personal pride in caring for his wife Soo-hee (Shin Eun-Kyung) and daughter Da-na (Seo Shin-ae), even as he hides his role from his conservative father. Yet this hiding-in-plain-sight act is about to end when daycare daddy ends up in debt and see his one viable way out as a game show for stay-at-home moms — a program where his talent agent buddy (Kong Hyeong-jin) happens to have some connections. A master of trivia, Jin-man dolls up in drag to qualify as a contestant then rips off his wig after getting goosed in the elevator. Whether skirted or pantsed, he's going to meet with resistors and champions.

Mr. Housewife's wife, however, is on the less-than-thrilled side. She fears his newfound celebrity as a spokesperson from stay-at-home dads as a potential derailer for her new gig as a TV host, leading her to rent a hotel room to figure out ... HER NEEDS! Sympathetic, she's not. That coldness is why Mr. Doubtfire never emerges as an outright rom-com. By the time Jin-man re-proposes to Soo-yi on live television in the game show's finale, she's rebuffed him so often that we kind of wish that he'd find someone else. But perhaps Yu's film is ultimately about second chances. Early in the film, Jin-man gambled away a family fortune, without consulting his better half, so if she can let that go, then maybe we should cut her some slack as well.

Hot Blooded: Once Upon a Time in Korea: Vodka Wars

Middle management sucks. Per Cheon Myeong-Gwan's gorgeously shot gangster pic Hot Blooded, that maxim holds true in the mafia, too. Mid-level mobster/hotel-manager Hee-su (Jung Woo) is its shining example, a career thug so in debt from gambling that "once you're out, your organs are all mine" — according to his neighborhood loan shark (Yun Je-mun). But how can he break out on his own without losing the little rank he's attained? Is loyalty not worth a dime? Has he aged out of his own future? This movie's message seems to be that greed has really messed everything up! A valid point of view.

Which is why Hee-su decides to traffic in black market vodka. He sees hustling stolen booze as his big break, his final chance to make a name for himself in the port town of Kuam. And you know what? In a different movie, his chances might not be so iffy. Upper mobility in Hot Blooded, however, is going to require a complete lack of morals. This is soul-selling time! Can you be good and rich? Or more specifically, can you become rich and stay good? Rarely, my friend. Rarely.

In fact, what once was the American dream is now the Capitalist nightmare, an international phenomenon in which every transgression can be forgiven if you're making money hand over fist. Drugs, drink, gambling, prostitution, murder... everything is excusable. How you earn your bank is secondary to how much ends up in the kitty. It's a distasteful POV, despite its global sweep, and one which puts no value on a human life. Including that of a childhood friend (Ji Seung-hyeon). All that matters is glamorous independence. Today's reality acknowledges that money's a more effective shield than innocence. Perhap it always has been that way. As George Bernard Shaw once quipped: "Morals are a luxury of the rich."

The Golden Belt: Category Is...

Cheesy, low-budget martial arts movies — as opposed to their classy counterparts — should be judged primarily on their fight sequences. An absurd plot with decent (dubbed) one-liners may occassionally amuse but without some well-choreographed action sequences to enthrall us, who wants to sit through a convoluted plot interrupted by bland hand-to-hand? Which unfortunately brings me to The Golden Belt, Ko Young-nam's lackluster pulp movie about a medicine man who's life work is to protect the helpless (after failing to do so with his own family).

Definitely, The Golden Belt could've featured some fancier fisticuffs. As the barechested hero, actor Kim Il may be built like a linebacker but he's got gracefulness to spare, too. He's also as cuddly as a bonecrusher could possibly be. So why are his talents at kicking and punching being wasted by having him throw porcelain white dinner plates like playing cards or having him tied to a post then whipped? One character rhetorically asks: "What is the worst thing in this world, do you know?" Then answers matter-of-factly: "Betrayal." In The Golden Belt, the greatest sins may be how they've overestimated the appeal of villainous white eyebrows and underestimated the talents of the movie's lead. (Who likely earned that gaudy WWE Championship Belt that he's carrying around from town to town.)

Title Note: This film is also known as Sujeja and The Best Disciple.

The Puzzle: Video Diary of a Repressed Serial Killer

I don't know about you but if I were looking to hook up with someone for a one-night-stand and the moment I got to this stranger's place, an unseen voice started telling me where to go over a speaker system in moodily lit halls with video cameras overhead, I'd turn around and leave. I've never been that horny! Yet Jung Do-jon (Ji Seung-hyeon) doesn't heed such warnings. Missing his shallow wife and tween child (who are abroad longterm), he's tired of being the celibate square at the office so he's going to choose from a pretty strange menu at a pretty strange saloon that serves sex instead of shots. Unfortunately, the secret desire this club's drugged wine is going to expose is Jung's misogyny. Which leads to murder.

What follows is the cover-up that backfires (a.k.a. the movie). So is anyone really cheering on this killer, except maybe the enthusiastic readers of his bestselling novel? (He pens books on the side.) Don't we all want to see him go down? Or does writer-director Lim Jin-seung assume our sympathies are going to be with the lead actor simply because... he's hot? Is he suddenly noble because he's worried about the well-being of his wife and daughter? Lucky for him, he studies martial arts (on the side) so he's ready to take on his newfound enemies when they start coming out of the walls. He's well-trained to murder again and again. So what's the message here? The Puzzle is one weird-ass puzzle. And no amount of false endings — and this movie has a few — is going to change that.