Go
might look like a board game, but it can be a full-contact sport in Korea. It
has a lot to do with the wagering. Sometimes the stakes are even life and
death. That suits a mysterious young Go prodigy just fine. He intends to serve
up some revenge as cold and hard as Go stones in Lee Khan’s “spin-off” sequel, The
Divine Move 2: The Wrathful, which opens this Friday in New York.
Young
Gui-su showed an early aptitude for Go and an early thirst for vengeance after
Go master Hwang Duk-yong takes advantage of his naïve older sister, driving her
to suicide. All alone in the world, Gui-su has the mostly good fortune to fall
in with Hur Il-do, a Go teacher and hustler, somewhat like Fast Eddie Felsen in
The Color of Money. They start making the rounds, but the thuggish Busan
Weed turns out to be a very poor loser. That leads to more grievances for Gui-su
to settle later.
After
several years of secluded study, the twentysomething Gui-su emerges for his
payback. The main event will be Hwang, but Gui-su will warm up on everyone who ever
wronged Hur. He will also make a little money in the process with the help of “Mr.
Turd,” his bankroller and comic relief. Meanwhile, the mysterious “Loner” stalks
Gui-su, hoping to extract his own vengeance for sins Gui-su committed with Hur.
In
a way, The Divine Move franchise is like the Tazza series for the
game of Go, right down to the supposedly-in-the-same-world-but-really-only-thematically-related
sequels. The Wrathful is also like the latest Tazza film in that it
is surprisingly violent and hard-bitten, especially for a film revolving around
such a cerebral game. Regardless, it is as gripping as a shark bite and nearly
as lethal.
