Review: THE PRISON Shackles Itself in Familiar Story

By Pierce Conran

The run of corruption thrillers that have proven so popular at the Korean box office of late shows no signs of abating with The Prison, which takes the same themes that have populated works such as Inside Men and Veteran, and applies them to the more intimate setting of a jail, which serves as a stand-in for society at large.

Click to read more»

Review: THE CONTACT Provides a Glimpse of Romance at the Speed of the ‘90s

By Chris Horn

The romance genre is always teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice: an original plot and strong chemistry between the leads are the essential yet often elusive elements of successful romance. In 1997, Jang Yoon-hyeon struck gold, courting both viewer and critical approval with his hit romance The Contact. While it has its share of self-indulgence, it ultimately deserves its reputation as a refreshing genre film.

Click to read more»

Review: THE ROYAL TAILOR Spins a Colorful Period Yarn

By Pierce Conran

Period dramas are all the rage in Korea at the moment, but while some have been setting records at the box office (such as Roaring Currents), not all have been successful. No film is a guaranteed hit but period productions are a costlier gamble than most and with those risks come certain strings. The Royal Tailor, a King’s court drama with a penchant for colorful fashion and plenty of humor, is a fine sophomore effort from Lee Won-suk, if one that feels bound by certain restrictions and obligations, particularly in its final act.

Click to read more»

Edinburgh 2013: The Berlin File (베를린, 2013)

Part of Connor McMorran's coverage for MKC of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (June 19-30, 2013).

Writing in his book 'The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema', Kim Kyung Hyun discusses the male-centric narratives found in Korean cinema of the 1980s and 90s. Discussing the film Shiri (1999), he argues that “The masculinity of Shiri’s protagonist veered away from the Korean male icons of the 1980s, but it did so by simulating Hollywood action heroes.” Shiri could easily be argued as the breakthrough moment for both commercial Korean cinema and genre cinema in general, creating a wave of films which heavily copied its style. The mainstream Korean film industry has thrived off genre cinema for the past decade, with the occasional ‘well-made’ film (films which are both commercially successful and show clear artistic intent, a perfect example being Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder from 2003) thrown in for good measure.

Click to read more»

UDINE 2013: The Berlin File (베를린, 2013)

Part of MKC's coverage of the 15th Udine Far East Film Festival.

From North By Northwest (1959) all the way to Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy (2011), spy thrillers have long captured the imagination of filmgoers. Over time they have become more elaborate and their appeal has led to a number of blockbuster franchises. James Bond recently celebrated his most successful outing with the chart-topping Skyfall while both the Mission Impossible and Bourne series have also stirred up some serious business.

Click to read more»

The Berlin File (베를린, Bereullin) 2013

From North By Northwest (1959) all the way to Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy (2011), spy thrillers have long captured the imagination of filmgoers. Over time they have become more elaborate and their appeal has led to a number of blockbuster franchises. James Bond recently celebrated his most successful outing with the chart-topping Skyfall while both the Mission Impossible and Bourne series have also stirred up some serious business.

Korea is no stranger to the genre. Shiri was the country’s first blockbuster hit in 1999 and the country’s contentious relationship with its Northern neighbor has yielded many a spy narrative since then. Ryoo Seung-wan previously dabbled in spies with his deliriously playful and inventive (but financially poisonous) spoof Dachimawa Lee (2008). He found greater success with his next work, the tense thriller The Unjust (2010), through which he channeled New Hollywood works of the 1970s. Now he’s returned to the spy genre for his most ambitious and commercial work yet.

Click to read more»

Jopok Week: The Alice in Wonderland Trajectory and Other Thoughts on Lee Chang-dong's Green Fish (Chorok mulkogi) 1997

My third review of 1997’s important Korean gangster films is actually on the first one that was released (February) during the year.  Lee Chang-dong’s Green Fish repositioned concerns of the Korean New Wave filmmakers, such as Park Kwang-su and Jang Sung-woo, into a narrative with much more commercial appeal.  After Gangster Lessons, Born to Kill, and Boss all featured in the top 10 Korean films of 1996, the gangster movie was a hot trend and Green Fish did indeed perform very strongly, landing at No. 8 the year it was released.  After penning Park Kwang-su’s To the Starry Island (1993) and A Single Spark (1995), Lee burst onto the scene with his debut, starring Han Suk-kyu, hot off the success of the previous year’s No. 1 Korean film The Gingko Bed and Song Kang-ho in a smaller role.  Both would feature later that year in No. 3.

“The refiguration of the urban space reconstitutes the familial relations that in turn destabilize the premodern values and ethics.”

Kyung Hyun Kim makes this point early in his ‘At the Edge of a Metropolis in A Fine, Windy Day and Green Fish’ chapter in his seminal volume The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema.  Lee’s film very pointedly and adroitly examines the encroaching urban crawl as it swallows Green Fish’s protagonist’s humble countryside home upon his return from conscripted military duty.  Lee presents the effect of this rapid urbanization in a very literal manner as Mak-dong’s large family unit has been shattered.  His father is dead, his mother seems to have gone a little cuckoo, his brother is a paraplegic (a precursor to Lee's third film Oasis, 2002), and his other siblings, including a young club girl and a degenerate, drunk detective, have spread apart.  The large brood cannot seem to function in the new urban and suburban space, chiefly the home of small nuclear families.

After an opening credits sequence which features a collage of pictures of Mak-dong’s family and home from years past, before Seoul loomed on the horizon, Green Fish begins with a scene on a train.  Mak-dong is returning from the army and is sticking his head out between carriages.  He looks to the left and sees an attractive woman do the same, though she is oblivious to him.  Her red shawl comes undone and floats down towards him, whipping across his face.  Back in the carriage he notices a trio of young thugs harassing her and gets involved only to get soundly beaten.  They get off at the next stop and he trots after them with a heavy object and whacks one of them across the head before scampering back to the train, but it’s already leaving so he must run away. 

Having left his bag on the train, he is now without any possessions.  This, coupled with the new landscape he comes home to, indicates an inevitable new beginning for him.  As he stands in his house’s door frame, he discards his military jacket, Lee opts to shows this using slow motion.

The train motif indicates the modernization of society, much in the same way that locomotives featured in some of the greatest Hollywood western films like Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1969).  Lee would employ train motifs even more prominently in his next film Peppermint Candy (1999) as his camera followed one in backwards shots in between the film's reverse chronological sequences. 

The red shawl is important because of its color, which indicates lust, love, blood, and the criminal underworld and because it covers his face. From the moment this happens, Mak-dong has begun to tread on a descending path into the underbelly of modern Seoul.  The woman is Mi-ae, the lover of Mak-dong’s future gang boss and she serves as an unwitting femme fatale.  It is his infatuation with her that ultimately leads to his downfall.

But Mi-ae is not Mak-dong’s only reason for eventually assuming a role as a low-level gangster.  His masculinity is put into question since he can’t fend a few young bullies and because at the time of his return, he is unable to prevent his mother and sister from performing demeaning duties for income.

The thugs who disrespect Mi-ae and gang up on Mak-dong represent an apathetic and displaced youth prone to violence.  Chung Doo-hwan’s autocratic regime fell in 1988 and with it a certain respect for authority.  Despite Mak-dong’s uniform which identifies him as a soldier, the youths attack him anyway.  Another example of this in the film is when Mak-dong rides in his brother’s egg truck.  After he gets pulled over for running a red light he manages to convince the cop to take a 5,000 won bribe.  He gives him a 10,000 note and the policeman agrees to go get him some change but then drives off.  Mak-dong and his brother then drive after him, swerving beside him and yelling at him to stop the car over an intercom.  It’s a funny reversal of roles but also a little alarming that they feel they can behave this way in the face of authority even if the cop is shown to be corrupt, though they are complicit in this.  Such behavior would never have been tolerated in Korea in earlier years.

For me the most successful element of the film is the staging of Mak-dong’s descent into criminal life.  I’ve already examined his initial encounter with Mi-ae but the next time he sees her it is as a reflection in a telephone booth in an unseemly part of Seoul.  He follows her through evocative red lights and past a clownish, foreboding club marketer, who pretends to shoot him in the head, into a big club.  She is a singer and appears on stage as a vision of white.  Mi-ae is the white rabbit and Mak-dong has followed her down the rabbit hole.

Later, Mak-dong gains entry into the gang world not by showing off his wits but by being violent and recalcitrant in the face of perceived authority in the form of Song Kang-ho’s hoodlum character.  Just before he is asked to do a job by the gang boss, he is in the main hall of the club.  The boss and Mi-ae enter and sit at a booth, she whispers something in his ear and he then shouts for the music to come on.  She gets up to dance to a spooky Tom Waits song and ambles in a slow, sultry fashion.  It’s a delightfully odd sequence that could nearly be part of a David Lynch film but it fits into Mak-dong’s Alice in Wonderland trajectory.

Next he is in a karaoke hall which features a scantily clad American exotic dancer performing on giant collage of TV screens.  Does this indicate that Korea’s globalization and contemporary fetish with American culture coincide with a debasement of morals?  Mak-dong goes to the bathroom and sings along to the song being performed, he stops at: “An unworthy son has this sin”.  He stares at himself in the mirror and then hangs his head before smashing his fingers with the door of a stall.  At first this seems like an act of self-mutilation borne out of guilt for the path he has embarked on. 

In the next scene he begins to harangue the patron who sang the karaoke song until he becomes annoyed enough to take a swing at him.  Mak-dong pretends that the patron has broken his fingers.  It turns out that this is his first job for the gang but he seems to revel in this self-destructiveness and willingly takes on the pain and he is later admonished by his boss for his youthful disregard for his own health.  Mak-dong’s self-destructive behavior continue when later he smashes a bottle over his head as people boo at Mi-ae on stage.

In a famous scene that was given tribute in Ha Yu’s exceptional A Dirty Carnival (2006), Mak-dong murders a rival boss in a bathroom and stuffs him in a stall.  Just before this he burns Mi-ae’s shawl.  Does he do this as he recognizes that he has become an active agent in his own debasement?

I find Mak-dong’s character arc to be brilliantly handled by director and writer Lee and performer Han.  The story itself is not very original but it is executed well and reappropriates the construct to highlight certain pressing themes in contemporaneous Korea.  Besides the few elements I’ve briefly discussed, Green Fish has an enormous amount to offer, a lot of which reveals itself on subsequent viewings.  It may not reach the heights of Lee’s later films but it stands as one of the most important works of 90s Korean film.

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Jopok Week: No. 3 (Neobeo 3) 1997

Though not as slick as later works like Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000), No. 3 was a presage of things to come in Korean cinema.  A vibrant film made by young people, reveling in anarchy, chaos, poetry, and philosophy. More than the other successful gangster films of 1997, No. 3 ended up being a significant breeding ground for future stars of Korean cinema.  Ask any western cinephile what Korean film stars they know and the most likely answers you’ll get are Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho.  Choi, as one would expect, is quite excellent but the stand-out has to be Song.  While he featured in Hong Sang-soo’s debut The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well the year before, it was in No. 3 that he made a name for himself. 

Rather than focussing on plot, No. 3 is more of a character piece involving gangster Tae-ju (Han Suk-kyu), his aspiring poet girlfriend Hyun-ji (Lee Mi-yeon), an aggressive prosecutor (Choi Min-sik), and a very strange hitman (Song Kang-ho).  Through a series of set pieces and discussions between characters, the film covers a huge amount of ground.  It is self-reflexive in its use of black humor, underscoring the absurdity of modern Korean society.  Much has been written and said about No 3 but I would like to draw on a coupe of points.

More than any Korean film that came before it, No 3 employs a myriad of stylistic tricks such as:  Colors; chiaroscuro lighting; composition; monochrome; music; fastforwarding; point-of-view; slow motion; freeze frame; strobe; and breaking the fourth wall (like staring into camera).  That last point in particular showcases how self-reflexive the film can be and braeaks up the narrative for the purpose of enticing the viewer to read the film differently.  The film is also entrenched is Western literature, citing authors like Virginia Wolf and even having a wispy, diminutive characters named Rimbaud, after the famed romantic French poet.  As Korea has changed throughout the 1990s, it has embraced new ideas and progressive Western thought.

One of the more interesting relationships in the film is the one between Tae-ju, the titular gangster No. 3, and Dong-pal, the aggressive, foul-mouthed public prosecutor.  They engage in a couple of discussions which explore the nature of their conflicting lifestyles.  In one, Choi criticizes people who judge a crime’s act rather than it’s perpetrator, a significant question in moral philosophy.  Regarding a crime, do we evaluate it in terms of the act, the perpetrator, or the consequence, as the utilitarians do?  I dare not get into any deep discussion on this subject, lest I expose myself as clueless charlatan but I am fascinated by this distinction. 

On the surface it seems pretty simple as we tend to judge crimes on the act themselves, but it’s easy to consider a few variations which expose the weakness of such a proposition.  Conspiracy to murder is an offence that carries a heavy sentence and does not necessarily feature any act at all if it doesn’t come to fruition.  In such a case, we judge a defendant on intent and the potential grievous harm that would have been inflicted.  Looking at the other side of the coin, it is also possible to judge an act on its consequence rather than the thought and action that led to it.  Utilitarian philosophy, chiefly a product of John Stuart Mill’s mind, and in large part responsible for today’s judiciary system, concerns itself with the aftermath of an act.  How much good came out of it versus bad?  The deliberation as to the balance of the consequence judges the severity of the crime or the benevolence of the good deed.  The most famously cited example for this is the dropping of the hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima during WWII.  Over 100,000 people died, the act it is responsible for the largest toll of human suffering in any single act.  However, the argument stands that countless more people were saved because of it.  Therefore judging on the consequence of the act, the bombing was just.

Dong-pal in No. 3 is part of the legal system that means that he should be principally concerned with crimes but he seems to go beyond his mandate by harassing criminals whose intentions are to commit crimes.  Normally this role is occupied by detectives which his character, with his moral philosophy, violent physicality, and foul language would seem to be a better fit for.  Late in the film Dong-pal shares a drink with Tae-su’s girlfriend Hyun-ji, who says “What I hate is not a sinner, but a sin itself.”  This is in direct opposition to Dong-pal’s philosophy but she asks him to help Tae-su and look on him as a younger brother.  Instead of vilifying the sinner, is it possible to reform him.  Essentially I think the point is to what extent is society to blame and can a figure of authority like Dong-pal prevent crimes by reforming the perpetrator and therefore removing the bad intentions?  Perhaps I’m reaching a little far with this but since the fall of the autocratic Chung Doo-hwan administration in the late 1980s, the role of authority in Korean society has changed an enormous amount.

More than just about any other Korean gangster film, No. 3 features a very strong and well fleshed-out female character in Hyun-ju.  The boss’ wife, while less clearly drawn, acts as a classic femme fatale who, as a result of her domineering affair with Rimbaud, plays a part in setting off the irreverent and chaotic climax, one of the greatest sequences in 90s Korean film.

While later Korean gangster comedies would frequently lampoon hoodlums, cutting them down in size, No. 3 does so in a more interesting fashion.  Tae-ju briefly becomes No. 2 in his gang after displaying his loyalty and wit but he is demoted after being stabbed and Ashtray takes his place.  Ashtray is a big lump of a character who brutally beats people with his namesake, which he stores down his pants, and does little else.  The violence is shocking and far from glorified and demonstrates how unseemly this facet of Korean society can be.  Darcy Paquet’s piece, posted earlier today for Jopok Week, on ‘The Rise and Fall of the Korean Gangster Comedy’, explores what went wrong with later gangster comedies after this promising start.

No. 3 features a number of wonderful scenes, including a great playground fight between Han Suk-kyu and Choi Min-sik, and just about every scene with Song Kang-ho who is hilarious and delightfully strange.  There’s much more to be said about this film than what I have explored but I will wrap up my discussion here.  I look forward to revisiting director and writer Song Neun-han's minor Korean gangster masterpiece in the near future.

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Villain and Widow (I-cheung-eui Ak-dang) 2010

Once again I’ve come head to head with a genre-bending Korean film and as usual I feel it necessary to comment on this fact. Villain and Widow is Son Jae-gon’s third feature, after The Man Who Saw Too Much (2000) and My Scary Girl (2006) and it is, as others before me have noted, perfectly uncategorizable. Being so used to the schizophrenic generic tendencies of South Korea cinema, this one actually seemed a little different. What I mean by that is that while it embodies many genres it doesn’t veer aggressively between them as is the norm. Instead it is a film which dares you to pigeonhole it, knowing full well you will come up empty-handed. Films like Save the Green Planet (2003) and The Host (2006) are both criticized and lauded for jumping with both feet from one genre to another as each new scene unfolds. I personally love that fresh style of filmmaking and find it invigorating and exciting, if done well. I suppose it could only last so long as the local film industry developed.

Han Suk-kyu and Kim Hye-soo

Villain and Widow is a film that seems to have taken the next step. Dare I say it, it transcends genre. Korean cinema understands genre and plays with it (and abuses it) with the utmost skill and it seems to me that Son is so acutely aware of the various tropes on offer that he has managed to mix and match them as he pleases but in doing so he has made something that doesn’t necessarily draw attention to itself. The previously mentioned films are nearly Brechtian in their blithe disregard for generic consistency and that can take you out of the experience if you resist it. In this film Son has managed to weave together elements from across the board to create a balanced narrative. I am very curious to see whether subsequent films will manage the same feat.

Han Suk-kyu plays Chang-in, a thief who is trying to get his hands on a valuable Chinese teacup that is somewhere in widower Yeon-joo (Kim Hye Soo)’s house, unbeknownst to her and her ex-child model daughter. The widower is dealing with depression, the child is an emotional wreck who is bullied in school, and the thief is up against a powerful, violent, and immature corporate heir. All the while there is the constant forward momentum as he tries to uncover the teacup not to mention some kind of relationship developing between the two leads.

Chang-in keeps getting stuck in the basement

If that sounds like a lot, it is. Throw in a young cop with his sights set on Yeon-joo, a nosy old neighbour, and Chang-in’s older partner in crime, and you’re left with too many strands, a number of which ultimately fall through the cracks. Despite this, the narrative is very easy to follow and Son quite skillfully guides us through this convoluted comedy/thriller/drama/etc. The film takes many unexpected turns as the situation becomes increasingly more complicated and it is full of inventive set pieces, not least a successfully protracted gag in which Chang-in keeps getting stuck in the basement. The film is never less than clever but it can be a little much at times although it also feels slight. It sounds like a contradiction in terms but I think it comes down to a lack of urgency in the narrative (save for the crime element) and the considerable depth of the plot.

The characters are well-rounded and quite unique. While Han is perfectly cast as the slimy and debonair burglar, it is Kim who steals the show as the fragile and complicated Yeon-joo. Her daughter is also well portrayed by Ji Woo and is quite an interesting character, having been a successful child model/actress she is now on the verge of becoming a teenager and is already all washed-up. She is considered ugly and wants plastic surgery, which is something that gets a lot of press in the country. It is a little distressing to see this young girl who already seems so damaged, not to mention the death of her father and the bizarre behavior of her mother.

Ji Woo as the daughter

I didn’t love Villain and Widow but I did enjoy it as it reminded me of films like The Ladykillers (1955) in the way that it managed to incorporate dark subject matter in what plays out like a mild-mannered comedy. I look forward to Son’s next film and I hope that he, as well as other Korean filmmakers, can successfully build on this evolution of hybrid filmmaking and provide us with some well-made and balanced offerings.


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.