The Villagers, Starring Don Lee

Yuk Ki-chul came to the provincial town to be a P.E. teacher, but he will end up teaching the adults a few lessons in ethics, civics, and criminal justice. He is also supposed to collect past due school fees, but actually helping missing students is supposedly outside his job description. Of course, Yuk does not see it that way in director-screenwriter Lim Jin-soon’s The Villagers (a.k.a. Ordinary People), which releases today on VOD.

Yuk is a big guy, but he often feels like a small fry. His new P.E. gig was the only job he could get, after getting blackballed for publicly calling out corruption in the youth judo league—and it still required a kickback. Regardless, everyone at school is quite nasty, except maybe Kang Yoo-jin. She is earnest kid, who is trying to get the police, or anyone else, to investigate the disappearance of her friend. However, she instinctively distrusts Yuk, because he is yet another adult.

In this film, the grownups really are a bad lot. The teachers and administrators only care about school fees, the local hostess club traffics young women, with the protection of the local political bigwig, Kim Ki-tae, and the cops are all corrupt and smell of booze. Yuk hopes that doesn’t also include his old friend, Kim Dong-soo, who is still just a timid, conflict-averse patrolman, under the best-case scenario.

Obviously, Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok) is a big guy, but he is surprisingly human in this early star-vehicle (from 2018) that is only now getting an American release. This time around, he bleeds like the rest of us and needs a realistic amount of time to bash his way through doors. In fact, he even shows vulnerability as sheepish Yuk. Yet, he always shows massive screen presence.

Lee also develops a nice halting rapport with former child-thesp sensation Kim Sae-ron, who broke out in the box-office hit, The Man from Nowhere, but died under tragic circumstances this year, before her 25^th birthday. She plays the imperiled teen with a melancholy that is quite effective—and rather haunting, in light of her sad fate.

Holy Night: Demon Hunters, Starring Don Lee

He is an exorcist who relies on his bare fists. When the devil needs a good butt-kicking, who you gonna call? Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok), that’s who. Technically, Bow’s associate Sharon does all the spiritual casting out of demons, but he is the one who holds off the hordes of satanic mortal followers. Frighteningly, business is brisk in Lim Dae-hee’s Holy Night: Demon Hunters, which opens Friday in theaters.

Ominously, the mortal “Worshippers” have recently sacrificed quite a few innocents under the direction of the shadowy “Archbishop.” Clearly, they are preparing something big. Bow fears it involves the unseen Joseph (seriously guys?), his fellow orphan, who was also “blessed” with elevated mojo, but gave himself over to the evil one.

Determined to avenge the nuns and orphans Joseph murdered, Bow dedicated his life to demon-fighting, with the help of his associates, Sharon and Kim Gun, two intended sacrifices he rescued. Sharon has the ability to operate on higher spiritual planes, but each exorcism takes a painful toll on her, physically and emotionally.

Young Eun-soo is an especially difficult case. She does not lack for good medical care, since her guardian older sister Jung-won is a neuro-psychiatrist. However, being a sensitive orphan makes Eun-soo particularly vulnerable to possession. In fact, the demon has dug in so deeply, Bow’s team must return to the scene of the crime, the sisters’ new home, where something very sinister is going on.

It could very well be that Lim and Lee learned an important lesson from Schwarzenegger’s only horror movie, End of Days. It is not a film that has a lot of haters, but by the same token, few really embraced it either. For his fans, it just doesn’t feel like a Schwarzenegger movie. In contrast, Holy Night is a Don Lee movie, through and through. We often see him hitting Worshippers so hard they literally fly through the air. He dishes out to the satanists like they are gangsters in his Beast Cop/Roundup franchise.

The Roundup: No Way Out

Forget Fast & Furious and Mission Impossible. The most reliable international action franchise is Don Lee’s “Beast Cop,” Ma Seok-do. He is more rock than The Rock, more diesel than Vin Diesel, and at least ten times the size of Tom Cruise. When his fists connect, people go flying. That happens a lot in Lee Sang-yong’s The Roundup: No Way Out, which opens today in New York.

The criminals of Seoul have nightmares of Ma, but his fellow cops often tease the good-natured giant. Joo Sung-cheol does not get to do that. Ma can tell his colleague is dirty, but he cannot prove it yet. Ma’s team started investigated the negligent murder of a woman who overdosed on “Hiper,” a new designer drug, which led to a Japanese Yakuza-controlled drug ring. The operation is secretly under Joo’s control and it has been skimming pills for extracurricular sales.

Having figured out their books do not balance, the Yakuza has sent Ricky the enforcer to teach Joo and his gang a lesson. It is a really bad time for Ma to start sniffing around, especially when his supply of pills goes missing. However, he profoundly underestimates the humble Ma. Their resulting cat-and-mouse game is a bit Columbo-like, but physically, it is much rougher.

The great joy of these films is watching Don Lee (a.k.a. Ma Dong-seok) punch, pile-drive, and power-slap his way to the truth. Lee has a big, “happy warrior” screen persona that is even more entertaining than Schwarzenegger in his 1980’s prime. The Ma-Beast Cop films are perfect vehicles for his size and chops.

Don Lee in The Roundup

A cop like Ma Seok-do does not need to carry a gun, because just look at him. It is just as well, since he is not supposed to pack any heat while in Vietnam. According to local law, he is not supposed to be chasing any criminals there either, but the “Beast Cop” from The Outlaws is always going to do what he does best. A ruthless band of kidnappers preying on Korean tourists is about to feel some pain in Lee Sang-yong’s The Roundup (a.k.a. The Outlaws 2), which is now playing in New York.

While technically a sequel, Roundup easily stands on its own. For fans of the previous film, it looks like Ma’s knees are holding up better now, but he is still just as huge. After taking down the Garibong-dong street gang, he has earned a bit of slack, even when his beat-downs make frontpage news. However, it might be convenient for the top brass to send him to Vietnam to escort a criminal who turned himself in at the consulate, while the controversy blows over.

Of course, Ma has to wonder why a crook would voluntarily surrender himself in a country without extradition. Fortunately, Ma has a knack for asking questions. It turns out the thug is hiding from Kang Hae-sang, the leader of a vicious abduction ring, who always killed his victims after receiving their ransom. His latest abductee was the son of a mobbed-up, usurious finance chairman, who did not take kindly to Kang’s methods. To find Kang, Ma can simply follow the dead bodies of mercs hired to kill him.

Once again, Don Lee (also billed as Ma Dong-seok) demonstrates massive screen charisma as Det. Ma. He is big, but he has a charming facility for humor—honestly, even more so than Schwarzenegger in his prime. Several times, Ma literally punches bad guys through walls and it always looks totally believable.

Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days

Heaven can wait, but reincarnation has a strict deadline. “Paragons” must prove their worthiness in forty-nine days or they will have to go through the purgatorial slog with the rest of the moral slobs. Apparently, paragons run in the family. Gang-lim and his team of guardians helped firefighter Kim Ja-hong navigate the seven hells and now they have been assigned to his murdered brother Su-hong. This time, the case awakens painful memories for the guardians that had been suppressed for nearly a millennium in Kim Yong-hwa’s Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

It isn’t easy being a guardian. Gang-lim and his assistants, Hewonmak and Deok-choon are one reincarnation away from their one-thousand-year quota, but despite his worthiness, Kim Su-hong will be a hard case. He was an angry ghost, because he was killed by two of his army comrades, but Gang-lim helped ease the bitterness in his heart, only slightly violating the afterworld’s Prime Directive. As a further complication, Kim claims he does not want to be reincarnated, but he goes along with the process out of curiosity.

As a condition for Kim’s expedited trial, Gang-lim’s team must also take care of some housekeeping in the human realm. An old man is long overdue to ascend, but Sung-ju, the house god living in his flat chases away all guardians that come with a death notice. He is played by Ma Dong-seok/Don Lee, so you know he will be formidable. In a major violation of protocol, Sung-ju now lives openly with old man and his abandoned grandson. However, he has a few secrets that will be of interest to Hewonmak and Deok-choon, because he served as their guardian way back when.

The previous film, AWTG: The Two Worlds, featured some intriguing afterlife world-building and some Tsui Hark-worthy fantastical action sequences, but seemed relatively self-contained. However, Last 49 Days answers just about every question viewers might have had, while deepening the backstories and mythology, eventually serving up several heavy revelations. It definitely tops the first film, even rectifying the some of the first film’s flaws, like the weak prospective paragon.

The intertwined histories of Hewonmak and Deok-choon are particularly compelling and so is the chemistry that develops between them, as played by Ju Ji-hoon and Kim Hyang-gi. As Gang-lim, Ha Jung-woo is still all kinds of steely, but he also ups his game, reaching for levels of classical tragedy. Even though Ma/Lee has become an action lead in his own right, it is easy to see why he would take an ensemble role as Sung-ju the household god, because it is quite an effective showcase for his larger-than-life screen-presence and good-naturedly luggish comedic chops.

The Two Worlds was visually impressive, but it is The Last 49 Days that really forges an emotional connection. We liked the first film, but after watching the second, we kind of love these characters. So, good news: we will be seeing more of them. The first two films were shot back-to-back, Matrix/LOTR-style, but The Two Worlds was such a monster hit in Korea, two more films have already been greenlit. Consider us down for the franchise. Recommended for fans of action-fantasy and good karma, Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days opens this Wednesday (8/1) in New York (simultaneous with Korea), at the AMC Empire.

Fantasia ’18: The Outlaws

You know Ma Seok-do must be a tough cop, because he is played by Ma Dong-seok (Don Lee). Ma has ten days to clean out every last member of the Chinese gang from the Garibong-dong neighborhood. Naturally, he will not have any help from the Chinese authorities and precious little from his own Korean police bureaucracy, but he can handle the task anyway with his crushing face-palm. It is time for Ma to take out the trash in Kang Yun-sung’s The Outlaws (trailer here), which screened during the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Ma is not a superman—he has bad knees. Criminals are better off running when they see him, rather trying to go toe-to-toe. In the past, he has informally maintained a truce between the local gangs of Seoul’s Chinatown district, but that went out the window when the savage Black Dragons arrived.

Jang Chen doesn’t respect anything except raw power. He came from Harbin to collect debts for his gang and decided to stay to build an empire. Reluctantly, many henchmen from the Venom Gang defected to his syndicate for reasons of self-preservation, but the only people Jang treats with any respect are his two psycho lieutenants. Of course, the merchants and residents of Garibong get the worst of it. Ma will have to convince them to stand with his ragtag unit if he has any chance of rounding up the Black Dragons before the case is kicked upstairs to the pompous homicide squad.

Ma Dong-seok beats the snot out of Black Dragons. Seriously, what more do you need to know? There is actually a fair amount of inter-gang rivalry and intrigue, but the film is really about Ma putting his foot in their butts. Frankly, the film is a little slow out of the blocks, but Kang uses that time to establish his many characters and the cowed and depressed atmosphere of Garibong-dong. Of course, when Ma hits the streets, the film is all business.

After Train to Busan broke Ma/Lee out in Korea and internationally, The Outlaws and Champion have solidified his status as a crossover action star. In both films, he shows he has the size, chops, and the amiableness to be something like the next vintage Schwarzenegger. Watching him swagger inspires endless confidence in a film. While Ma’s Ma is the drinking buddy you always wanted, Yoon Kye-sang makes Jang Chen one seriously cold-blooded villain. He is the sort of ruthless sociopath the audience will yearn to see crash and burn. Yet, Park Ji-hwan and Jin Seon-kyu manage to periodically upstage him as his chief rival and first lieutenant, each of whom is dangerously erratic.

In fact, Ma’s final fight is the sort of scene that will bring a smile to fans’ faces. Ma exerts his body-slamming authority all over the film, but we’re always comfortable in his presence. There have been plenty of Korean gangster movies, but Ma is still relatively new to being a leading man and former pop star Yoon also ventures outside his rom-com safety zone—and viewers can pick up on how fresh and energizing it all is for them. Recommended without reservation for fans of Ma and Korean crime films, The Outlaws had its Quebec premiere during this year’s Fantasia.

Champion: Don Lee Arm-Wrestles

It takes a brave man to star in an arm-wrestling movie after the face-plant that was Over the Top. Ladies and gentlemen, that man is Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok). He is the one who brawled his way through a train car of zombies in Train to Busan. Believe it or not, his character even references the notorious Sylvester Stallone bomb as his inspiration. Yet, Lee manages to surpass his role model in Kim Yong-wan’s unabashedly earnest family sports drama Champion (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

“Mark” Baek Seung-min is big, but shy. He had a hard time of things during his formative years, so it is understandable. His desperately poor Korean mother gave him up for adoption, but his American foster parents died shortly after his arrival in the States, leaving him essentially on his own. Inspired by Over the Top, arm-wrestling became his only passion, but his professional career was cut short in America by a dubious scandal. His only friend, the sleazy (but possibly decent way deep down) Jin-ki has lured him back to Korea with the promise of managing his professional comeback.

To sweeten the deal, Jin-ki also offers up the address of Baek’s birth-mother, but the arm-wrestler soon learns she has recently passed away from cancer. However, he discovers he has a sister (Su-jin), a niece, and a nephew he never knew of. Suddenly, they have someone to chase away the mobbed-up bill collectors and fix things around the apartment, while Baek finally starts to feel a sense of belonging. Of course, his refusal to throw matches at the behest of a crooked sponsor will probably lead to trouble down the line, especially when the scummy sports bettors recruit Punch, a steroid-juicing, psychotic former contender to be their standard bearer, straight out of prison.

Lee, who was born in Korea, but grew up in America, graduating from Columbia State University, clearly understands where his character is coming from. He is acutely earnest as Baek, but he also looks like he could rip Stallone’s arm off. It is easy to see why he has already reached a significant level of stardom in Korea and is poised to do the same internationally when you see him interacting with Ok Ye-rin and Choi Seung-hoon, the young, ridiculously cute thesps playing his niece and nephew. The fact that he is not dramatically up-staged by them, pretty much says it all.

Lee also shares some nice chemistry with Han Ye-ri’s Su-jin and turns some rewarding third act scenes with Kwon Yool’s heretofore annoying Jin-ki. Unfortunately, Yang Hyun-min and Lee Kyoo-ho make rather generic villains, who really are not very enterprising. Plus, Kim’s screenplay manufactures a lot of bogus drama that starts to try our patience. Yet, we can’t help rooting for Baek and his potential new family, because they all look so good together.

So, to recap, if you need a sensitive hulk, Don Lee is your man. As good old Lincoln Hawk says: “The world meets nobody halfway. When you want something, you gotta take it.” To that end, Lee carries this film and thereby grabs leading man status. Nobody should have any illusions—Champion is shamelessly manipulative and sentimental, but it is an indomitable crowd pleaser—with distinctly Korean sensibilities. Recommended for fans of Don Lee and family-friendly triumph-over-adversity sports movies, Champion opens this Friday (5/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Train to Busan: Yeon Goes Live Action, but Stays Zombie

Busan is home to one of Asia’s most important film festivals. It happens to be a fest with a large midnight section, so they are probably no strangers to zombies. According to rumors, Busan handled the unthinkable catastrophe better than most Korean regional governments. Unfortunately, there are several train cars loaded with even more shuffling undead headed straights towards the city in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

For those keeping score at home, TTB takes place one day after the events of Yeon’s animated zombie film, Seoul Station. The morning news is filled with mysterious reports of violent riots erupting, but the average citizenry is still unaware a full scale zombie apocalypse has broken out. Super-busy fund manager Seok-woo proceeds to take his unhappy young daughter Su-an to visit her mother in Busan, exactly as planned. Obviously, if any zombies get in, a speeding commuter train will be a terrible place to be cornered: a confined space, packed with people, but no guns.

Of course, one manages to jump on at the last minute, along with uninfected shellshock man. By the way, these are not slow zombies we are talking about. They happen to be really darn fast. As usual for Yeon’s films, crisis brings out the worst in humanity, especially the scummy transit executive Yong-suk. Despite his every-man-for-himself instincts, Seok-woo will start working with a handful of passengers to survive. The audience will especially care about working class hardnose Sang-hwa, his mega-pregnant wife Sung-kyung, high school baseball player Young-guk, and cheerleader, Jin-hee. Yes, they do have baseball bats, which will be put to good use.

So basically, TTB is like Under Siege 2, but with zombies instead of Eric Bogosian. Yeon unleashes a massive undead beatdown, but it never feels CGI’ed. Those zombies pile-ups look as real as you’re ever going to want to see them. There is wide-ranging wreckage and a good deal of gore, but the human emotions are also legit. There are several character sacrifices—and they are always heavy moments. Frankly, Yeon’s only real mistake comes in killing off too many major characters. While we respect him for respecting the principles of zombie cinema, TBB deserves to become a franchise, which would be easier with a few more returning faces.

Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) is just plain awesome as the brawling Sang-hwa. His star has been steadily rising, but TTB should send it into the stratosphere. Likewise, An So-hee scores breakout turn as the resilient Jin-hee. Gong Yoo and Kim Su-an are certainly believable and ultimately quite poignant as the dysfunctional father and daughter, while Kim Eui-sung chews the scenery like Pac-Man as the odious Yong-suk. Yet, Yeon chooses to humanize him at the most unlikely moment. That is not like the frequently didactic filmmaker, but it sure keeps viewers off balance.

Yeon does not exactly reinvent zombie natural history, per se, but he gives the genre a few new tweaks. However, the pedal-to-the-metal execution will leave zombies fans in awe. It is easily the best zombie film since Sabu’s Miss Zombie, which was an entirely different cinematic creature. Very highly recommended for genre enthusiasts, Train to Busan opens this Friday (7/22) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

The Chronicles of Evil: You Could Say This Case is Personal

Chief Detective Choi’s latest investigation represents something of a conflict of interest. He is under considerable professional and political pressure to close the case quickly, regardless of the truth. Technically, he also happens to be the killer, but you would hardly call him the mastermind of screenwriter-director Baek Woon-hak’s dark thriller The Chronicles of Evil (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Queens.

After years of plugging, Det. Choi is on the verge of a national appointment. He has just received the presidential service medal, so if he can avoid entanglements for the next few months, his career should be made. Unfortunately, after a night celebrating with the Detective Squad, Choi’s cabbie waylays him, taking him to a remote park, where he tries to kill the baffled flatfoot. Leathery old Choi turns out to be more than his assailant can handle. However, after killing the man in self-defense, Choi covers up the incident rather than risk the inevitable controversy. This will be a mistake in retrospect.

The next morning, the top brass is outraged when a corpse is found very publically dangling from a crane at a construction site. Of course, Choi recognizes him. To satisfy his superiors, he will have to clear the case quickly, but he knows the DNA under the vic’s fingernails and the blurry CTV images of a passenger in backseat will inevitably lead back to him. Therefore Choi must try to ferret out his mystery antagonist, while struggling to cover his own tracks.

In a way, Chronicles somewhat parallels Kevin Costner’s breakout hit No Way Out, but Baek gives the story some grittily distinctive cops-and-stalkers twists. He shrewdly positions Choi as a figure compromised enough to deserve his predicament, but decent enough to root for. Baek nicely keeps one darned thing coming after another, getting flat-out Biblical down the stretch.

Recognizable to genre fans from Huh Jung’s Hide and Seek, Son Hyun-joo is perfectly cast as Det. Choi. He looks like a migraine personified and has vinegary world weariness sweating out of every pore. Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) is also reliably charismatic and hardnosed as Choi’s chief deputy, Det. Oh. This is a manly ensemble that has little time for romantic subplots or comic relief. They are all about covering-up and settling scores. When you spy a somewhat metrosexual character, be suspicious—very suspicious.

Baek is a wickedly smooth director, who pulls the audience through this murky morality tale at warp speed. Even though it is a supporting role, Chronicles (along with The Fives, Kundo, and Nameless Gangster) suggests Ma/Lee has enough cult/genre credibility for Hollywood to start calling. They could use someone with his action cred and screen presence. Highly recommended for fans of anti-heroic cop thrillers, The Chronicles of Evil opens this Friday (5/22) at the AMC Bay Terrace, in Flushing, Queens.