March 24, 2023

Hostage: Missing Celebrity: Shooting Star

Hostage: Missing Celebrity is asking us to believe a buttload of improbabilities. Like that kidnapped movie star Hwang Jung-min (played by Hwang Jung-min) is going to give his murderous abductor (Kim Jae-bum) access to his apartment but not the pin for his bank account. Or that a cop who gets hit by a cab is the one who's going to drive the police car as opposed to his uninjured partner (Baek Joo-hee). Or that the gang-leading villain would think a different hair part — without so much as a hat — would be enough of a disguise to go back out in public after an APB. Or that a crazy old man who lives in the woods would have the cell phone number of the Chief of Police. But let's say a viewer is willing to accept any and all unlikelihoods. How does writer-director Pil Gam-sung's 2021 thriller fare?

Well the kidnapped actor is definitely a narcissist with entitlement issues, the kind of guy who starts talking about how many times he had to audition while chained to a post with a young woman (Lee Yoo-mi) who's face is bruised, battered, and bloody. As for the rest of the cast, this movie has too many cops, too many crooks, and too many reporters with too few lines. Bodies are piling up at the end. But some will also rise again. You never know who's actually dead in this movie as people survive hand grenades and homemade bombs. The determining showdown? A mudfight in the rain! The big question: Who's gonna get the final chokehold? (And will the loser rise again?)

Unlocked: Personal Hangups

Anyone who has lost their phone knows that such a misfortune can seem like the end the world. In the case of Unlocked's Nami (Chun Woo-hee), such a supposition might not be a gross exaggeration. Because the creep (Yim Si-wan) who has recovered her missing phone is a hyperskilled hacker. And an identity thief. And a serial killer. Soon enough, this triple-threat of death is making our heroine's life a living hell — poisoning her career, kidnapping her dad (Park Ho-san), and alienating her best friend (Kim Ye-won). What's working in her favor is a detective (Kim Hee-won) who quickly surmises who the killer is; what's working against her is this same detective may be the father of the maniacal cyberstalker.

Once she realizes her phone is at the root of all her problems, does she get a new one or at least stop using her cell so often? Not immediately. As a typical member of Generation Z, she's way too invested in Instagram and Instant Messaging to put her device down for more than a Seoul minute. Which makes spying on her so much easier. Especially when the spyware expert she chooses to hire turns out to be ... the serial killer again! Yes, Unlocked has plenty of coincidences. And yes, we're asked to overlook some major narrative holes. Like a second police officer (Jeon Jin-oh) who, despite recognizing what's going on, defers to his partner's faulty judgment over and over again. But Kim Tae-joon's technothriller has such a timely conceit at its center that you'll likely be experiencing anxiety for the full two hours, regardless of its lapses in logic.

March 7, 2023

Voice of Silence: Stolen Childhoods

What's the old adage? Never share the stage with a pet or a child? Frankly, it's a terrible piece of advice. Because if performers adhered to it, we'd never get a movie like the wonderful (and often devastating) Voice of Silence, one of the most impressive big screen debuts to come out of South Korea in the last decade. For Director Hong Eui-jeong's first feature abounds with powerful scenes between adults and children. And while the film isn't exactly told from a kid's perspective — at the center of the movie is Tae-in (Yoo Ah-in), a mute man-child who finds himself in the middle of a botched kidnapping crime — you really do sense the precariousness and danger that are inherent to being at the mercy of adults.

As the abducted child, Cho-hee (Moon Seung-ah) must do her best to appease her captor, forge alliances with a fellow youngster (a brilliantly feral Lee Ka-eun), and attempt to coordinate her own escape. Adults are neither reliable (including her unseen parents) nor trustworthy. Which is unfortunate for what is our role as grown-ups if not that of caretakers? What are we doing as a species if not collectively working for the well-being of the next generation? And, on the other end, what options do we have as kids, except to make the best of the situation in which we find ourselves? And how can we not turn out to be the same muddle-headed people repeating the destructive patterns of those before us. It's what we saw and know as the way to survive.

March 2, 2023

Singing Praise for Actor Song Kang-ho

If there’s a better actor working in South Korean cinema than Kang-ho Song that’s news to me. And for the record, I’ve been watching about one Korean movie per week for the last 15 years. In my opinion, no other actor is as capable of effortlessly shifting from comedy to drama within his or her career or within a single flick either. And partly because of that, he’s excelled whether the movie is a feel-good sports comedy (YMCA Baseball Team), a dystopian, art house hit (Snowpiercer), or a Ramen Western (The Good, the Bad, the Weird). And that’s not even getting into his five best performances outside the Oscar-winning Parasite — which I assume you've already seen.

The Host (2006)
As a narcoleptic single dad who loses his daughter to a gigantic mutant amphibian with a taste for humans, Song displays his full (and formidable) range of talents in director Joon-ho Bong’s heartbreaking Godzilla-movie with a twist. He’s lovable, maddening, resourceful, inept, bumbling, pathetic, intense, and most memorably of all, sleepy. I’ve always been amazed by Song’s ability to milk “being tired” for laughs. Just when you think he’s exhausted the set-up, he revitalizes it with a new bit of shtick that you’d never considered before. The Host earned Song his first and only Asian Film Award as Best Actor, although he’s been repeatedly nominated many times since.

Memories of Murder (2003)
With a plot ripped straight from the headlines (about South Korea’s first documented serial killer), Bong’s immensely gripping crime pic is unique in how satisfying it is despite never solving its central crime. A large part of that satisfaction comes from Song’s incredibly naturalistic performance as one of the two lead detectives assigned to the case. (Kim Sang-kyung plays the other.) In one particularly exciting chase scene during which Song’s character and two partners run after the suspected killer, your eye constantly goes back to Song. It doesn’t matter if he’s leading the pursuit, falling behind, scanning a crowd or zeroing in on a construction worker’s red panties, he’s always the most interesting person on the screen. As per usual.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Song doesn’t truly enter the story until nearly a fourth of the way through the second entry in Park Chan-wook’s genius Vengeance Trilogy. And although he’s arguably Sympathy’s hero – a business exec whose only daughter accidentally drowns during a kidnap gone wrong – Song’s coolly calculating vigilante elicits one of his most contained performances yet. Stand-out moments include an autopsy during which he’s struggling to contain his grief and his first sadistic act of revenge. (Watch how he preps the ears of the woman he’s about to electrocute.) Song’s always been a fearless actor willing to take big risks but Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance shows he also knows how to reign it in.

Thirst (2009)
Vampires are sexy. Okay, so what about a vampire who’s also a self-sacrificing priest? As Song plays him, he’s kind of like the nerdy librarian from Transylvania who, when he takes off his wire-rim glasses, suddenly becomes a perversely oversexed creature... albeit one wracked with guilt and plagued with blisters. And while Song hardly has the matinee idol looks of a frequent costar like Lee Byung-hun, he’s still got plenty of charisma to spare. Who knew he could be so hot? Well, I did! Plus, with Thirst, his longtime collaborator and director Park provides Song with yet another unexpected credit as Song became the first male actor to show full frontal male nudity in a mainstream Korean movie. Now that takes balls.

The Show Must Go On (2007)
Song has played gangsters more than a few times – Green Fish, Hindsight, No. 3 – but never has he done so as entertainingly or enthrallingly as in this South Korean variation of The Sopranos. For this Show, he plays your typical bourgeois patriarch trying to reconcile the responsibilities of a father with the duties of a mobster. As you’ll see throughout Song’s oeuvre, drunk scenes – many a performer’s undoing – are just another place where he shines; one contritely inebriated encounter with his daughter is especially a wonder to behold. Like auteurs Bong and Park before him, director Han Jae-rim went back to Song again after The Show Must Go On for his next film, the historical drama The Face Reader. Smart directors learn very quickly: Song is one of a kind.

Honorable Mentions: J.S.A. (Joint Security Area) (2000), Secret Sunshine (2010), Secret Reunion (2010) and The Attorney (2014)

Note: An earlier version of this article appeared on Tribeca Film Festival's now-retired blog Outtake.