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.