Punch / <완득이> 2011

Directed by: Lee Han / 이한
Release date: October 2011

High-school student Wan-deuk is angry and rebellious and keeps to himself. His father, a hunchback, should have been a talented professional dancer but instead must eke out a living as an itinerant comic dancer. The complications keep coming – his neighbor turns out to be his iconoclastic teacher, Dong-ju; the sudden reappearance of his birth mother who is a Filipino guest worker in Korea, and so on – but Wan-deuk finds an inner strength and sense of fairness in himself that not only guides him but begins to win him supporters, including the attention of the hottest girl in his class.

As well as a being a bildungsroman, the film deals with a whole series of topical issues of discrimination, such as discrimination against the disabled and against foreign guest-workers – topical but not preachy with a good leavening of humor. The acting was especially flawless. The film was a little slow paced and could have used tighter editing. 

My take: 5 stars!

Distressed by her worn shoes, Wan-deuk takes his new-found

mother to a store and buys her some patent-leather pumps …

and claims her as his mother to the nosey shopkeeper

(Jasmine Lee, Yoo Ah-in, unaccredited).

Guns and Talks / <킬러들의 수다> 2001

Directed by: Jang Jin / 장진
Release date: October 2001

Four men run a lucrative enterprise, but not your ordinary business, they hire out as professional killers: Sang-yun lays the plans, Jung-woo is a specialist with bombs, Jae-young a skilled sniper, and Ha-yun is the electronics whiz. Neither are they your ordinary hit men: they are a quirky bunch who all live together and have family meetings about their next target. Police detective Cho gets a break in hunting them down and is hard on their trail. Then they take on what may be their final job, an impossible-to-pull-off public assassination, all to please a lady with a pretty face.

Not your ordinary hit men and not your usual action film, indeed not. This film is another of director Jang Jin’s contribution to his oeuvre of quirky comedies. It’s a long film (120 minutes) but it never gets boring. Jang’s visual and verbal humor just keeps on coming. And it never veers off into gross “bathroom” humor! Hurray! In my book, Jang Jin is a comic genius. The music and cinematography are pretty awesome as well, and the play within the film, snips from Hamlet, was gorgeously staged (perhaps a reference to director Jang's extensive stage directing experience?). 

My take: 5 stars! (I love the droll humor of Jang Jin!)

A high school student from the neighborhood drops by, she
wants her teacher knocked off. The four attempt, not very convincingly,

to convince her that they are not what they seem, that they don’t

kill people for a living (Jeong Jae-yeong, Sin Ha-gyoon,

Shin Hyeon-joon, Won Bin, and Kong Hyo-jin).

The Recipe <된장> 2010

Directed by: Lee Seo-goon / 이서군
Release date: October 2010

A murderer’s last words before execution recall the fabulously delicious bean paste soup he ate just before his arrest. Intrigued by this report, a reporter seeks out the soup and begins to learn of the mysterious woman behind it and of a recipe for fantastic bean paste.

The first third of the film is a quirky comedy, the middle third a series of bittersweet journeys, and the last third slides into a beautifully filmed but soppy love story. Throughout the whole film, the cinematography and animation was superb. The comedy sections were immensely enjoyable, done in a very understated comic style. The changes in pace for the film were odd but still, overall, an enjoyable film.  

My take: 4 stars

The wanted criminal enjoys and finishes his bowl

of bean-paste soup with no awareness of the swat team

bursting in to arrest him … the soup is that good!

The Day He Arrives / <복촌 방향> 2011

Directed by: Hong Sang-soo / 홍상수
Release date: September 2011

Film director Seong-joon is experiencing a fallow patch and has taken a job teaching in the countryside (well, actually in Daegu). He is up visiting Seoul and wanders the streets, alleys, and bars there, meeting people he knows, people he does not know, and people he does not want to know – former colleagues, former girlfriends, film professors and film students, bar hostesses, fans – and then he meets them again.

A film that features a number of the things director Hong Sang-su has become famous for: characters involved in filmmaking; scenes acted without scripts; long takes and tracking shots; a slow pace; little to no development, plot, or action; and repetitions of certain themes and tableaus, to name a few. Despite the slowness of pace and sparseness of action, there is a certain richness to the film, especially for cineastes. Hong’s love for the cinematic form, and for classic French New Wave cinema, shows through. My take: DC

A drunken Seong-joon yells at the film students
to stop following him.

The Servant / <방자전> 2010

Directed by: Kim Dae-woo / 김대우

Release date: June 2010

The traditional story of Chun-hyang is totally turned on its head. It is the Chosun Dynasty (perhaps 17th century?) and Bang-ja – former servant, now rich – wants to have the story of his love told. He hires a scriptwriter and relates the story of the beautiful Chun-hyang, the daughter of a ki-saeng. In this version, both Bang-ja and his yang-ban master, Lee Mong-ryong, will compete for her love.

A visually sumptuous but overly long (124 minutes) new take on the old pansori of Chun-hyang. Some of the overly long scenes are sex scenes. The plot is convoluted and somewhat confusing (what is Master Mong-ryong really up to?) and while some of the new plot twists are interesting, the end left me totally cold. I hope no one ever tries to apply the “sex secrets” the old servant Ma imparts to Bang-ja, but then this was just supposed to be comedy. This is a very post-modern presentation of the 17th century as well, with lots of chairs and gorgeously colorful costuming, neither of which are authentic for the period. My take: DC

My favorite film version remains Im Kwon-taek’s 2000 Chun-Hyang.

 In The Servant, Bang-ja (Kim Joo-hyeok) petitions fellow servant,

Elder Ma (Oh Dal-su), to be taught the esoteric knowledge Ma has
about the ways to read a woman’s heart … and get into her bed.