Salsali, You Didn't Know: 007 for Laughs

Salsali, You Didn't Know is one of those comedies in which life would be so much easier if the on-screen characters simply said what they meant. Instead, when the title character (Seo Young-choon) goes to a duped acupuncturist (Kim Hee-kap) looking for payment re: just-delivered jewelry absconded by a scheming woman (Do Kum-bong), his lack of specifics lands him in a James Bond plot perfectly in line with the 007 paperbacks he's taken to reading avariciously. Suddenly, crime pops up everywhere he turns. The jewel thief is tied to a gang that also runs a disreputable dancehall; the cellar of the hotel is the site of a counterfeit money-laundering scheme; a stolen meal at a Chinese restaurant must be paid for by entering a boxing match.

Our hero may be thin as a rail but he happens to have a mean punch. He also has a thing for the mincing sister of the movie's femme fatale. He also has a thing for crossdressing... although his reasons for doing so stretch the limits of plausability. Well, at least he has a good wardrobe. Most wild of all, he has a strange gift for using mannequins to save the day, whether it's a nude plastic woman in a shower or a conveniently placed artificial arm under a bedsheet. I would never call novelist Ian Fleming a writer of realism but after watching Kim Hwa-rang's crime-caper-comedy, the derring-do of Fleming's British superspy feels nothing short of reasonable.