Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb

It was a time of censorship, but not necessarily Puritanism. Director Kim Yeol is a 1970s Korean filmmaker was a long stretch of lurid sexual potboilers under his belt. His first film was critically acclaimed, but many suspect it was greatly shaped by his mentor, Director Shin, who died during its production. He now has a vision for how to make his latest film a masterpiece, but neither his studio boss nor the censors want to let him recall the cast for reshoots. He will just have to work around them in Kim Jee-won’s Cobweb, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Director Kim is absolutely not based Kim Ki-young, the late cult filmmaker best known for the original The Housemaid, as his heirs and the producers of Cobweb clearly established through an arbitration agreement. No, this “Director Kim” has been grinding out trashy thrillers since his tragic debut made a notorious splash. After wrapping his latest movie, also titled Cobweb, he literally has a flash of inspiration, prompting him to rewrite most of the second half.

President Baek, the studio boss and Director Shin’s widow, does not want the additional expenses and the state censors will not approve his new pages, because they are weird, especially the ending (which is true). However, Shin Mi-do, Director Shin’s niece and the studio finance chief, recognizes the brilliance of his revisions. She also has an in with the head of the censorship office, so she approves his reshoots while her aunt is out of the country on business. Since they are revising extensively, the one promised day of reshoots will not be sufficient, so Mi-do literally locks cast and crew inside the soundstage. Chaos and tension ensue.

Cobweb is sort of like Noises Off with the pressure of state censors looking over everyone’s shoulders. The manic farcical action is a bit of throwback to Kim Jee-woon’s zany The Good, the Bad, the Weird, from the filmmaker better known for darker horror and thrillers like I Saw the Devil, The Age of Shadows, and Dr. Brain. Some of the supporting characters are maybe a bit too wacky, like the method actor playing a detective, who pretends to investigate Director Kim, to stay in character. However, the way the film-with-the-film evolves and takes on greater significance as we learn Director Kim’s backstory is quite clever.

In fact, the black-and-white retro-horror-looking scenes from the fictional film are wonderfully stylish and affectionately droll. Director Kim’s “weird ending” lives up to its promise. Kim Jee-won and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong stage some incredible sequences, like Director Kim’s long climatic tracking shot, which we see from an incredibly messy behind-the-scenes perspective and as a finished product. In fact, their use of the sealed soundstage and its impressively designed sets is consistently inventive.

Kore-eda’s Broker

If you peruse the list of past Cannes Ecumenical Jury Award winners, some of them might look a little forced. The truth is it can be tough to find films that express the experiences and concerns of the Christian communities of faith in major film fests, but Japanes auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film was a fitting selection. It might just be the most pro-life film ever—especially since it was not conceived with the American Evangelical market in mind. More importantly, it is a profoundly moving film that also won the Cannes best actor award for Parasite’s Song Kang-ho. For his character, every unwanted baby has value, especially those he can facilitate black market adoptions for in Kore-eda’s Broker, which opens tomorrow in New York.

After helming his first film in France with The Truth, Kore-eda shifts to the current cultural capitol of the world, South Korea, for a tale inspired by the controversial baby boxes, designed to safely accept unwanted babies, no questions asked. The vast majority of such babies are placed in adopted home. However, when the mother leaves a note promising to return, they are sent to an orphanage instead—as sort of an escrow arrangement. The thing is the mothers almost never really return, consigning their abandoned foundlings to orphan-limbo. “For the sake of the babies,” part-time church employee Dong-soo erases the records of those babies deposited with maternal notes, so baby-broker Ha Sang-hyeon can facilitate a black-market adoption—for a fee of course.

Moon So-young is the exception. The morning after leaving her baby, she returns to reclaim him. Fortunately, He and Ha manage to intercept her. In his regular life, Ha is a workaday hand launderer, but he is sufficiently persuasive to talk Moon out of making trouble. In fact, he convinces her to help screen prospective parents for her baby. However, on the first stop of their road trip, they pay a visit to the orphanage that raised Dong-soo.

As a result, Moon starts to understand his ill-concealed resentment towards her. They also pick up a young stowaway, Hae-jin, who secretly joins their journey out of a need for belonging. It is actually a caravan if you include the two women are hot on their trail. Soo-jin and her junior colleague are detectives hoping to catch Ha and Dong-soo in the act.

Broker exemplifies the humanism and forgiveness found in all of Kore-eda’s very best films. The emotional pay-off lands brutally hard, but it never indulges in cheap sentimentality. Kore-eda does not serve up a conventionally “happy ending,” but he still takes viewers to a very uplifting place. This is one of Kore-eda’s best films to date, ranking alongside the classic After Life. It is a shame it is not getting the critical acclaim it warrants, probably because of its pro-life implications.

Rest assured, Kore-eda’s screenplay is never didactic, but over and over, his characters argue every baby deserves a chance. Honestly, if the Evangelical community does not embrace Broker, then go ahead and call them dumb philistines.

Emergency Declaration: The Korean Airplane Outbreak

Technically, aviation writer John J. Nance already combined the viral-thriller with the airline disaster genre back in the mid-1990s, but maybe the novel Pandora's Clock and its subsequent TV-movie never made it to South Korea. Regardless, the Macguffin certainly has a whole lot more resonance now. Yet, pre-production started on the high-concept Korean thriller back in idyllic 2019. Weren’t those the days. As it turns out, this virus might have also escaped from a lab, with a little help from a psychotic in Han Jae-rim’s Emergency Declaration, which opens today in New York.

Sgt. Koo In-ho was supposed to join his beloved wife on vacation, but work forced him to cancel. As it happens, she is on the same Honolulu-bound flight with Ryu Jin-seok, a former virologist with a vicious mean-streak and a tenuous grasp on reality. He has decided to let loose a strain of secret virus he has been illegally refining and intensifying. Conveniently, there is also a spare pilot on-board, but like Robert Hays in Airplane! he carries much more baggage than the bags he checked. The disgraced Jae-hyuk is also traveling with his pre-teen daughter, to further ratchet up the stakes for him.

Due to some old-fashioned police work, Koo manages to sleuth out Ryu’s intentions before chaos totally erupts on the plane, but after the release of the viral agent. Naturally, the captain is one of the first to fall sick. It seems pretty clear co-pilot Hyun-soo will be needing Jae-hyuk eventually, but he still blames the former pilot for his wife’s death.

So, there is a lot to deal with here. Sook-hee, the transportation minister will generally be helpful, but Tae-su of the president’s crisis management team is obviously shifty. Altogether, Emergency Dec has everything an Airport movie could want, except George Kennedy. Han dexterously juggles all the subplots and keeps the tension tightly wound. Since this is a Korean film, the suspense is particularly high, because you never know, this really could all end in tears.

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

It is a derogatory term you might expect a class warrior apply to the idle rich or entrepreneurs might use to describe those who are out to sponge off the fruits of their talent and achievements. It cuts both ways, so it is the perfect title of Bong Joon-ho’s boldly ambiguous, Palme d’Or-winning Parasite, South Korea’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens today in New York.

Kim Ki-taek’s family only occasionally works odd jobs, but they have knack for freeloading (stealing) wifi. They live in a squalid basement apartment, but have no real interest in raising themselves out of it. However, they immediately recognize a golden opportunity when their son Ki-woo is invited to take over the college-prep tutoring of the Park family’s high school student daughter, from his former classmate.

Thanks to Ki-woo’s inside information, the Kim family conspires to replace the other household servants, while keeping their own familial relationships secret. Technically, they will have to work, but they enjoy plenty of luxuries on the sly, courtesy of the Parks. It all goes exactly according to plan, until a third party threatens to upset the new equilibrium.

Frankly, it seems like Bong lost control of his film to his characters, as if they came alive and commandeered their own movie, but that is a good thing—a very good thing. Bong’s last two films have been so bluntly and crudely didactic, they have been embarrassing to watch. Parasite is something else entirely. There are more than enough elements to support radically different readings of the film and it constantly challenges us to reconsider where our sympathies really ought to lie. In some ways, it could be compared to Joker, for the way it confounds expectations and undercuts lazy snap moral judgements. After all, just because characters have been bullied or have been economically and socially marginalized does not automatically make them morally superior.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of poor and distressed characters who are victimized in Parasite—by the Kims. Conversely, the rich Parks are not all bad. In fact, they just might have greater merits than the Kims (admittedly a low bar to clear). Mrs. Park is guileless and easily manipulated, but she is generally sweet-tempered. Mr. Park is a devoted family man, but he definitely expects the social hierarchy to be strictly respected (given what we learn about his new driver, Kim Ki-taek, it is hard to blame him). In contrast, Mr. and Mrs. Kim practically declare themselves to socialists occupying the Park home, as well as stone-cold sociopaths

A Taxi Driver: Korea, May 1980

To this day, the Gwangju Uprising remains controversial in Korea. Partisans on either side still claim either the North Koreans or U.S. military intervened, despite a lack of evidence either party got involved. Reportedly, the ROK Army suffered its greatest casualties when they opened fire on each other, which is never an advisable tactic. However, they had no trouble shooting at unarmed civilians when German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter started secretly filming the Uprising. His footage shocked the world, but it was even more traumatic for the cabbie who witnessed it unfold live in Jang Hoon’s A Taxi Driver (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Like many Koreans, the mystery cabbie calling himself “Kim Man-seob” believed the demonstrations were just a few self-indulgent college students. Frankly, he does not pay much attention to rumor or the media, so has no idea what he is getting into when he intercepts a pre-arranged 100,000 won fare to take Hinzpeter from Seoul to Gwangju and back. Much to his surprise, the military has barricaded all roads into town. Once they slip in, Kim will also be even more taken aback by the city’s war footing. He just wants to get paid and return to Seoul, but when he delivers a secondary fare to the hospital, the death and suffering he sees there will finally rouse his political conscience and sense of outrage.

As it turns out, Gwangju cabbies were highly activist, because Hwang Tae-sul and his colleagues give their Seoul counterpart quite a dressing down. Regardless, the taxicab setting is quite convenient for facilitating plenty of car chases and stunt driving. However, it is still quite a faithfully rendered period production, most definitely including the cars and the clothes, but also probably the music too (but we will defer to the judgement of K-pop experts on that point).

You have to give Korean cinema credit for hospitality when they cast western actors in major roles. While Chinese films pretty much only employ Yank and Brit expats as cartoon villains (hello, Wolf Warrior franchise), Korean films offer some highly sympathetic portrayals of historical figures. In this case, Thomas Kretschmann’s Hinzpeter is a figure audiences will personally root for even more than Liam Neeson’s Douglas MacArthur in the rip-roaring Operation Chromite and he covers a wider emotional range.

Of course, Song Kang-ho was born to play slightly problematic everymen, like Kim. His steadfast denial and constant bickering with Hinzpeter wears a little thin after the first act, but he really lowers the boom in his scenes of disillusionment with the government and subsequent embrace of democratic idealism. The ever-reliable Yoo Hai-jin is also likably salty but down to earth as Hwang.

This is a case where articles make a world of difference. Sharing absolutely no kinship with Travis Bickle, A Taxi Driver is very much in the same inspiring inspired-by-real-life-events bag that also spawned the Song Kang-ho vehicle, The Attorney. However, ATD has more action and intrigue and just generally happens to be more movie-like. Despite his occasional score-settling, Jang Hoon’s execution is tight, tense, and ultimately downright Capra-esque.  Recommended for fans of underdog historical dramas, A Taxi Driver opens today (8/11) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Submitted by Korea: The Age of Shadows

It was something like a Korean Operation Anthropoid. In 1923, the demoralized resistance pulled off a spectacular bombing of Japanese police headquarters. It turns out, it was an inside job. Hwang Ok, a Korean officer on the despised Japanese constabulary turned yet again. Frankly, even his thinly fictionalized analog is precisely sure where his loyalties lay in Kim Jee-woon’s The Age of Shadows (trailer here), Korea’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which is now playing in New York.

As a Korean on the Japanese force, it is Lee Jung-chool’s job to be a rat. His former friend, the high-ranking resistance agent Kim Jan-ok makes that explicitly clear when he opts for death rather than capture. The incident so rattles Lee, it leaves him receptive to the overtures of Kim Woo-jin, a rising star in the Righteous Brotherhood—or so Kim thinks.

Despite having Hashimoto, a ruthless counter-insurgency copper, constantly looking over his shoulder, Lee manages to play both sides and keep his options open throughout the first two acts. However, the longer he goes without busting his new pal Kim Woo-jin, the closer he comes to switching sides, like Captain Renault in Casablanca. This becomes uncomfortably clear to Lee when all parties end up on a Hitchcockian train bound from Shanghai to Seoul, with a huge shipment of explosives stashed in the cargo car.

Although Age does not exhibit the exquisite lunacy of I Saw the Devil or The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Kim Jee-woon still clearly delights in tweaking and amping up the conventions of the historical espionage thriller. His convoluted plot makes a John le Carré novel look simplistic and he certainly hasn’t gotten shy about staging a shootout. It is not quite the all-out action Nirvana of Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination, but it still delivers plenty of bang for your buck. The titular echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows are probably not accidental either. There are so many double and triple crosses, Lee essentially loses track of whose side he is on.

Korean superstar Song Kang-ho (looking pretty trim) is terrific as the conflicted Lee. He really humanizes the dilemma between pragmatic but dishonorable survival and the patriotic idealism that would most likely get him martyred. Gong Yoo (recognizable from the monster hit Train to Busan) also gives flesh-and-blood dimension to the earnest Kim Woo-jin. Han Ji-min further boosts the glamour and the tragedy as Yun Gye-soon, the secretary to charismatic resistance leader Jung Chae-san (Lee Byung-hun in a memorable cameo) and Kim’s secret love interest.

If viewers are okay with the deaths of dozens of characters we come to know and root for, then Age of Shadows is tons of fun. Most likely it will be way too much fun for that stick-in-the-mud Oscar, but there is no reason we can’t enjoy it. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of period action and espionage films, The Age of Shadows is now playing in New York, at the AMC Empire.

NYAFF ’16: The Throne

It is a hard fact of royal life that a family member has to die before the next prospective king can take his “rightful” place on the throne. Sure, kings have abdicated, but it is generally a bad idea to leave loose ends cluttering up your divine authority. The cutthroat nature of royal families drives the tragedy of Lee Joon-ik’s The Throne (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival.

Known for prizing scholarship, particularly Confucian ethics, King Yeongjo was slightly disappointed in his ne’er do well, possibly psychotic son Prince Sado. At least that is Team Yeongjo’s side of the story. Of course, Team Sado argues the Prince was not really mad per se, just rattled by the King’s constant belittling. For years a cold war rages between them, but both are restricted from taking direct action by decorum and courtly law. However, Prince Sado finally raises arms against his father in the opening scene, only to be betrayed by his wife, for the sake of their son, the anointed heir.

Sealed in a rice chest as a means of indirect, technically-not-an-execution-by-the-letter-of-the-law, Prince Sado slowly and agonizingly wastes away, as the film revisits their tempestuous history through flashbacks. Frankly, Lee and co-screenwriters Jo Chul-Hyun and Oh Seung-hyun do not favor either the father or the son. Instead, their sympathies lie with the grandson and the various royal family members and court officials caught in the crossfire of their intrigues.

In America, The Throne is notable as Korea’s foreign language Oscar submission, but on its home turf, it was eagerly anticipated as “Little Sister” Moon Geun-young’s return to film after an eight-year hiatus at college and on television. As Lady Hyegyeong, the potential Queen Mum, she is quite a compelling picture of conflicted loyalties and motherly anxiety. Lee Hyo-je is also surprisingly effective as the anointed grandson. Aside from Thirst, most fans know Song Kang-ho for his more affable, schlubby characters in films like The Face Reader and The Attorney. While not exactly a heavy, the severe King Yeongjo is a bit of a departure, but Song sort of humanizes him with some weird fussbudgetry. Yoo Ah-in similarly plays Prince Sado with such off-putting clamminess, it is only because of Lee Hyo-je that viewers come to sympathize with Team Sado.

Regardless, The Throne is a rich period production and its machinations are fascinating even if we often lack a strong rooting interest. Yet, Lee Joon-ik and company ultimately make a case for the sort of tragically Machiavellian sacrifices nobility requires. Arguably, it shares a distant kinship with Mike Bartlett’s West End hit, King Charles III. Recommended for its wealth of first rate performances and a provocative examination of the costs of attaining and maintaining power, The Throne screens this Thursday (6/30) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

NYAFF ’14: The Face Reader

It is not quite fair to lump physiognomy together with phrenology, because the shrewder readers largely supplement the pseudo-scientific analysis with Sherlockian deduction. Kim Nae-gyeong happens to be one of the better ones, but it is not hard to read the ambition written all over Grand Prince Su-yang’s face. Unfortunately, Kim’s family will be engulfed in the ensuing royal power struggle during the course of Han Jae-rim’s The Face Reader (trailer here), which screens during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.

As the son of a disgraced nobleman, Kim prefers to lay low and eke a modest living with his bumbling brother-in-law, Paeng-heon. However, his renown as a face reader leads super-connected brothel owner Yeon-hong into tricking him into her employment. Fate shifts quickly in the Joseon era, though. A pro bono gig for the gendarmerie attracts the attention of the venerable deputy prime minister, General Kim Jong-seo, who whisks him off to work with the inspection board evaluating new officials. One of the candidates he approves happens to be his son, Jin-hyeong, who has renounced his name for the sake of a career.

Impressed by his work, the general and the king task the face reader with detecting the traitors within their midst. Obviously, the king’s brother is the leading candidate, but the king dies before Kim gets a good hard look at him. As the grand prince consolidates his hold on the military and the nobility, the face reader scrambles to protect the newly crowned twelve year old king and his guileless son.

Evidently, NYAFF’s special guest and Korean Actor in Focus, Lee Jung-jae has quite the fearsome countenance. You would not want to trifle with him in Park Hoon-jung’s wickedly entertaining gangster film New World, either (which also screens today, full review here). While there is plenty of Richard III in his ruthless usurper, Lee puts an intriguing spin on the character.

Although Face Reader is the first costume role for Snowpiercer’s Song Kang-ho, a sad clown like Kim Nae-gyeong is totally in his wheel-house. Yet, it is Jo Jeong-seok who really lowers the emotional boom, despite Paeng-heon’s deceptively rubber-faced demeanor. On the other hand, Lee Jong-seok’s Jin-hyeong has little presence throughout the film, mostly looking like he has just had his stomach pumped. Such is not the case with Baek Yun-shik, who brings all kinds of grizzled gravitas as General Kim (he has the face of a lion, by the way), while Kim Hye-soo’s courtesan functions as the smart and sophisticated witness to the tale of woe.

Face Reader acts as a corrective to many period action epics, in which a handful of motivated swordsmen can easily scythe through an imperial army. It is also unrepentantly tragic, which meant boffo box-office in South Korea, out-grossing Iron Man 3. Yet, for international audiences, the way karma ironically asserts itself during this chaotic era will be the thing that really sticks. Not surprisingly, it clocks in north of two hours, but Han helms a tight ship, with hardly any slack allowed on-screen. Highly recommended for fans of historical intrigue, The Face Reader screens tomorrow (4/7) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer

In the future, the world will become a giant allegory. Nothing in this claustrophobic dystopia performs a practical purpose, but serves a vision of class warfare at its most extreme. At least it all looks cool when the train’s tail-section revolts in Bong Joon-ho’s first English language production Snowpiercer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Seventeen years ago, a climate control experiment went horribly wrong. Now that the Earth is a frozen wasteland, the only surviving humans live in the protection of the globe circling train providentially prepared by the mysterious Wilford. However, instead of assigning productive tasks to each survivor, the Wilford express maintains a rigid and baffling bizarre social caste system. The further up you travel, the richer, crueler, and idler the passengers get. It’s all sushi and filet mignon up front, but gelatinous protein bars for the proletarian in the tail-section, who do not really appear to work either, but just sit around waiting to be beaten by the guards (apparently the train’s only productive class).

Curtis Everett has emerged as the leader of the proles in the back of the train, whether he likes it or not. He is still haunted the things he did during his darkest, most desperate hours, but old Gilliam provides encouragement and wise counsel to the budding revolutionary. Everett is biding his time, waiting for a cue from a source ensconced somewhere further up the train, but the arbitrary ruthlessness of Minister Mason, a buck-toothed caricature of an elitist exploiter, forces his hand. Freeing Nam-gung Min-su, the drug-addled Korean security specialist who designed the train’s door locks, and his train-born daughter Yo-na, Everett and his followers plan to fight their way to the engine room. Stopping anywhere short of that will doom their revolt.

Frankly, Snowpiercer is even less subtle than it sounds. Tilda Swinton is a great screen thespian, but her portrayal of Mason is embarrassingly cringey. She is also emblematic of the film’s fundamental problem—this simply is not a believable world. People act mean and savage for no logical reason accept to live up to a class-based stereotype. Nonetheless, production designer Ondřej Nekvasil and art director Štefan Kováčik created a distinctively detailed calling card that ought to earn them a gig on the next Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton film.

If you prefer your movie leads on the sullen side than you will probably be okay with Chris Evans’ turn as Everett. He is a brooding machine, but looks respectable during the well-staged action sequences. John Hurt’s Obiwan shtick also works well enough for Gilliam the sage. However, the only real surprises found in the film come from the characters of Nam-gung Min-su and Yo-na—as well as the respective performances of Korean superstar Song Kang-ho and Ko Ah-sung, his juvenile co-star in The Host. Viewers should keep their eyes on this tandem, because together they nearly redeem all of Snowpiercer’s flaws.

Uncut by the Weinsteins, Snowpiercer is so didactic it will give intellectually sophisticated viewers a headache. Yet, there are fascinating Easter Eggs buried throughout it, thanks to a skilled design team and Bong’s Host alumni. Diverting for those who appreciate spectacle and mayhem, but disappointing on any deeper level, Snowpiercer opens this Friday (6/27) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

The Attorney: He Also Does Taxes

Depending on who you ask, the late ROK President Roh Moo-hyun was either a principled idealist or a corrupt demagogue. A new film unequivocally holds to the former view. A thinly fictionalized Roh will argue a life-altering, inspired-by-true-events case in Yang Woo-seok’s The Attorney (trailer here), which opens this tomorrow in New York.

Even though he never graduated from high school, Song Woo-seok became a self-taught bar-certified attorney (sort of like Lincoln). He even briefly served as a judge, but resigned to pursue a more lucrative practice, for the sake of his family. Recognizing an early opportunity, Song becomes one of the first to take advantage of a legal change allowing attorneys to register property deeds in place of a notary. At first, the legal establishment is openly contemptuous of the bounder. Then the business starts pouring in.

Eventually, other attorneys starting competing for Song’s real estate business, so Song once again makes a shrewd move into a tax practice. Ironically, when the paper-pushing Song finally litigates a case, the fix is in right from the start.  In acknowledgement of a debt from his early scuffling years, Song reluctantly agrees to represent Jin-woo, the son of a forgiving noodle shop proprietor. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary criminal case, but a dubious national security prosecution, with confessions already lined up courtesy of the ruthless Captain Cha Dong-young.

When it gets down to political business, The Attorney is certainly not shy about waving the bloody martial law shirt. However, the first half of the film is actually a rather touching story of hard work and sacrifice rewarded, in the tradition of The Pursuit of Happyness.  Song Woo-seok (a fusion of the director and star’s names) is an earnest everyman, who earns his piece of the pie the old fashioned (but unfashionable) way.

Of course, once the sainted Soon-ae’s son is arrested, The Attorney shifts into high moral outrage gear. Korean box office superstar Song Kang-ho leaves it all on the field as his half namesake, wringing all the righteous indignation and heroic sincerity he can out of the courtroom cross examinations. At least Yang and co-writer Yoon Hyun-ho step back from the Few Good Men, acknowledging an experienced government employee like Cha will never cop to ordering a “Code Red” on the stand.

Fans of Song Kang-ho, Korea’s top domestic movie star, should probably seek out The Attorney, despite its excesses, because there is no telling how much of him will be left once Harvey Weinstein finishes editing Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer with a hacksaw. Yet, it is veteran actress Kim Young-ae who really instills the film with dignified sensitivity as honorable gravitas as Soon-ae. It is also amusing to see Oh Dal-su (Oldboy’s sleazy private prison warden) do his shtick as Song-Woo-seok’s sitcomish office manager. Unfortunately, Kwak Do-won (a great villain in A Company Man) largely phones in Cha, the cold fish.

In a way, The Attorney sort of confirms the theory political liberty inevitably follows economic liberty.  After all, Song Woo-seok sure is busy with real estate transactions in the early 1980’s. While the performances are mostly quite impressive, it never really captures the telling period details. Without the narrative reference points, viewers might mistake it for a contemporary legal drama. While it is sure to stoke political debate in Korea, The Attorney is only recommended for American viewers with a crack cocaine level addiction to legal table-pounding melodramas when it opens tomorrow (2/7) in New York at the AMC Empire.

NYKFF ’12: Hindsight

Se-bin is like a Korean Lisbeth Salander, except she is younger and crack marksman rather than a hacker. Otherwise, she is just like her alright. She certainly interests a retired mobster, but not in a sleazy way. Yet, their non-romance constantly flirts with tragedy in Lee Hyun-seung’s emotionally complex Hindsight (trailer here), one of the highlights of tenth annual New York Korean Film Festival now underway at BAM.

Du-heon was an old school gangster who never really made the transition from cutting implements to guns. Perhaps that is why he wants to be a chef. Always the favorite of the soon to be deceased boss of bosses, rival factions have Du-heon under surveillance. Their spy is Se-bin, Du-heon’s impatient partner in his culinary class. Her punky look and vastly superior skills intrigues the former racketeer.

Once a top-ranked competitive shooter, Se-bin’s career was cut short by an accident. Reluctantly, she agreed to keep tabs on Du-heon after she and her ambiguous girlfriend Eun-jung became indebted to the Busan mob. When Eun-jung makes their situation worse, Se-bin is forced to take a more active role in the brewing gangland power struggle. However, her hard to define feelings for Du-heon complicate matters tremendously.

Lee Hyun-seung is best known internationally for Il Mare, which Hollywood remade as the watered-down Lake House. While he concentrates on Du-heon and Se-bin’s not exactly paternal but scrupulously chaste relationship, he has a pretty good handle on the gangster genre elements, which gives him the space to let the two leads breathe and evolve.

One of Korea’s biggest stars and easily the most recognizable to American art house audiences, Song Kang-ho delivers a knockout performance as Du-heon. Instead of the schlubby loser in The Host or the reckless oddball in The Good, the Bad, the Weird, he gets to play the Clint Eastwood role in Hindsight. Cool but not smooth, he brings a hardnosed gravitas to Du-heon American audiences really have not seen from him before, while sharing some unusually sensitive chemistry with Shin Se-kyung’s Se-bin, who is cute and vulnerable to a truly scary degree (especially for a would be assassin).

Perhaps a tad long at a smidge over two hours, Hindsight also probably has one or two hired killers too many. However, it is a genuinely fresh and mature spin on the gangster morality play. Lee and Song’s reputations should assure it will be programmed by many Asian and general interest film festivals around the country, but if the rights are available, an American distributor really ought to take a good hard look at it. Unexpectedly endearing, Hindsight helped launch the 2012 NYKFF in fine style last night. Screenings continue tonight and tomorrow (2/25 & 2/26) at the BAM Rose Cinema, two blocks from the Atlantic Avenue subway hub.

NYAFF ’10: Secret Reunion

South Korean attitudes towards the North are complex to say the least. Though they understand it is scary up there, the desire for unification leads to a lot of denial. It is a dynamic that can be seen clearly in Hun Jang’s contemporary espionage thriller, Secret Reunion (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Lee Han-kyu is an old school, turf conscious counter-espionage agent. Contemptuous of his agency’s bureaucratic CYA-ing, he is determined to bring in the Ghost, a legendary North Korean assassin, sans back-up. Unfortunately, when his operation goes spectacularly badly, his A is not C’ed. Witnessing the Ghost’s cold-blooded execution of a DPKR defector and his family, Song Ji-won, a mole being run by the Ghost, is deeply shaken. Slipping away in the chaos that follows, he must remain invisible to all, lest his Communist masters suspect he betrayed them. Standard operating procedure under such circumstances in the North would be to condemn his entire family to a prison camp—for all intents and purposes a sentence of death.

As the reunification movement gains traction in the South, the old spy-hunter finds himself out in the cold. Self-employed six years later, he takes scummy gigs, specializing in tracking down runaway mail order brides. Working incognito at a construction site, the fugitive Song helps Lee fend off a Vietnamese gang that got the drop on the freelancer. Recognizing each other right away but pretending not to, Song accepts Lee’s job offer, even moving into the disgraced agent’s crash pad. Of course, as the wary antagonists circle each other at close quarters, they start to become friends in spite of themselves.

As the representative of Southern anti-Communism, Lee is naturally portrayed as the more morally expedient of the two. Song only aided and abetted the execution of defectors and their families. Lee, the capitalist, essentially kidnaps marginalized women to return them to abusive relationships. When pressed by Song, he justifies himself claiming: “Capitalism is about finding happiness by taking another’s wealth.” In truth, that would be a near textbook definition of the Marxist redistributionist system championed by Song’s DPRK. Still, there are certain realities Reunion cannot escape, like the potential fate of Song’s family.

For two-fisted buddy action, Reunion is pretty satisfying. However, as spry as the Ghost might be, it stretches action movie credibility when a man of his advanced years so easily eludes Lee and his pursuing team. In geopolitical terms, the film seems somewhat naive and confused as well. Clearly suggesting we can all just get along, it became an enormous hit when it was released domestically in February. Less than two months later, the ROKS Cheonan was sunk by a DPRK torpedo. How’s that Kumbaya looking now?

Slickly produced, Reunion features Song Kang-ho, probably the recognizable Korean actor in America thanks to roles in films like Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, Kim Ji-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and Bong Joon-ho The Host. Indeed, he is perfectly cast as the anti-Communist Oscar Madison. However, while Kang Dong-won is certainly a credible action figure during the fight sequences, he is a bit bland during the quieter moments of dramedy.

Hun Jang mostly keeps Reunion moving along briskly, despite occasionally getting hung-up on Song’s moralizing. Interesting as a Rorschach test of ROK attitudes towards the North, it screens during the 2010 NYAFF on Friday (7/2) and Saturday (7/3) at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater.