Review: INTIMATE ENEMIES Marks Low-Point For Im Sang-soo

By Pierce Conran

In a bid to branch out to a wider audience following the tepid critical and commercial response to 2012's The Taste of Money, director Im Sang-soo returned with the spirited but borderline incoherent action-comedy Intimate Enemies in 2015.

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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.

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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.

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BIFF 2012: Perfect Number (용의자X, Yong-eui-ja-X) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

I originally saw Bang Eun-jin’s sophomore film Perfect Number at the Busan International Film Festival last October. I am a big fan of the Japanese book (‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ by Keigo Hegashino) that it was based on and as I felt that the story would be a great fit for Korean cinema my expectations were very high. Too high it seems as I found myself a little disappointed by a film delivering something I wasn’t expecting.

A reclusive math teacher is smitten with his next-door neighbor who lives with her niece. One day her ex-husband comes to visit and a violent altercation ends with his lifeless corpse hitting the ground. The teacher has heard what transpired and knocks on their door. Quiet, composed and intelligent, he offers to help his distressed neighbors.

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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.

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PiFan 2012: Over My Dead Body (시체가 돌아왔다, Sichega Dolawassda) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Comedy is a curious beast even at the best of times. Across the world’s national film industries, thrillers, horrors, romances and action films share many common elements, while comedy tends to be fall in line with indigenously codes. I’ve said it before but it bears mentioning again: for foreign viewers, Korean comedies are a tricky proposition. Dialogue-based humor is often lost in translation and societal quirks, idiomatic expressions, customs and cultural references further complicate our relationship with these works.

My knowledge of Korean is steadily rising (and had a big bump during PiFan) so I’m starting to see things that I may have missed out on before and Over My Dead Body, which was presented in the World Fantastic Cinema section is proof of this but still doesn’t convince me that comedy is a forte of Korean cinema. It’s another of the many high-concept, mid-budget and low-brow comedy-thrillers that the industry has been churning out for some time. Having exploited certain generic combos, like the gangster-romance comedies (Marrying the Mafia and My Wife Is a Gangster), to the point of depletion, comedy writers have gotten into a habit of concocting increasingly outrageous premises in the hopes of eliciting laughs through the sheer absurdity of their narratives.

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Preview: The Devotion of Suspect X

I recently finished reading Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X, a book I picked up by chance in London Luton Airport as I was trying to offload my last 10 pounds following my trip to the East Winds Festival and Symposium earlier this month.  Truth be told, I rarely read modern fiction anymore and much less do I purchase physical paperbacks.  However, as I browsed the WHS Smith, I didn’t find any classics so I resignedly drifted over to the general fiction section and after a thorough perusal of the shelves I elected to get Dance Dance Dance (1988), one of the few novels I hadn’t read from Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors, but as I made my way to the check-out a book buried deep in a display table caught my eye.  I was immediately drawn to it and quickly changed my mind about Murakami.  I didn’t know what it was but I later realized that I had come across its name in passing as it is happens to be an upcoming Korean film project, though I knew nothing beyond its title.  I certainly wasn’t aware that it was based on this popular Japanese crime thriller.

Not too long ago I read Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque and Cut back to back and was quite taken with their effortless style chronicling extraordinary and often horrific events.  From its opening pages, The Devotion of Suspect X gripped me and turned out to be the very definition of a page-turner as I devoured it in two sittings.  When I put down the book I was filled with a nervous energy and I’m sure its devastating ending will stay with me for a long time.  Suddenly I’ve become terribly excited about the forthcoming Korean version of this 2005 novel, which was already made into a cult 2008 Japanese film.  The premise, the characters, the atmosphere and the underlying themes make it a natural fit for Korean cinema and if done right it could well become one of the breakout hits of the year.

Ryoo Seung-beom

The story, taken from the backpage blurb of the English-language Abacus edition, is as follows:

“Yasuko lives a quiet life, a good mother to her only child.  But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one evening, her comfortable world is shattered.

When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that night, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated.  Nothing quite makes sense…”

Though not referred to in the above synopsis, the principal character of the novel is actually Yasuko’s next-door neighbour Ishigami, a high school math teacher who sets in motion the extraordinary story.  Before making the connection to the forthcoming Korean film, I was already picturing the burly and jovial Ko Chang-seok as this formidable and fascinating character.  When I remembered the upcoming Korean film I hoped he was playing him, though it would have been a long shot as he is not a top leading man.  Indeed that did turn out to be the case but I was no less excited by the actor selected in his place. 

Lee Yo-won

Ryoo Seung-beom played the punk kid for years in Korea cinema (often in his brother Ryoo Seung-wan’s films) until he was finally cast in meatier roles in The Servant (2010) and The Unjust (2010) among others.  Now he is one of the industry’s leading lights and at 31, he still has a lot ahead of him.  He’s about 20 years younger than the character (who has been renamed to Suk-go for the Korean film) so it remains to be seen whether the teacher’s age will be changed or if Ryoo will be subjected to hours of makeup everyday like Jeong Jae-yeong and Park Hae-il were for the recent Moss (2010) and the upcoming Eungyo (2012).  In any case I think Ryoo is a great choice and while he will certainly set himself apart from the protagonist presented in the book I think he has just the right combination of charisma, intelligence and paranoia to pull it off.

Playing the role of Yasuko (renamed Hwa-sun) will be Lee Yo-won who most recently starred in The Recipe (2010) and the K-Drama 49 Days (2011).  Her beauty and demureness should be advantageous for the role and though I am not overly familiar with her work she seems like a strong choice.

Bang Eun-jin

Leading the whole affair will be Bang Eun-jin, who was primarily known as an actress before she turned to the director’s chair with Princess Aurora, one of the best genre efforts to come out in 2005.  Her sophomore film is a much more ambitious affair but given the nature of her first outing and the way she handled herself, I am confident that she is the right person for the job.

I think it’s fair to say that The Devotion of Suspect X (I imagine this title will subsequently change) is one of my most anticipated Korean films, not too far below Bong Joon-ho’s Snow Piercer (2013), Lee Hae-joon’s My Dictator (2013), Im Sang-soo’s The Taste of Money (2012) and Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Berlin File (2013).  I hope this has whetted your appetite as well!

While no release date has been confirmed as of this writing, filming, which began in December 2011, should be completed.  I imagine the film is being prepped for an autumn or winter release.

For more information on this and other films, visit MKC's Upcoming Releases page.

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.

No Mercy (Yong-seo-neun Eobs-da) 2010

Sol Kyung-gu was the first Korean actor whose name I remembered and after his extraordinary turn in Peppermint Candy (1999) I was convinced that he was someone to look out for. Sure enough, as I poured myself deeper into Korean film I came across Public Enemy (2002) and Oasis (2002), which further cemented him in my eyes as a great actor. After his earlier works, a lot of which were arthouse films, Sol’s career trajectory took a turn. How can I say this, he became a bankable star. Kang Woo-suk’s Public Enemy trilogy made millions and turned into one of the country’s most well-known names. He then starred in an even bigger project, the short-lived highest-grossing Korean film that was Silmido (2003), also by Kang. Beyond that he became a consistent presence at the Blue Dragon and Grand Bell awards (Korea’s most prestigious industry awards ceremonies), the highlight being when he was double-nominated in 2005 for Public Enemy 2 (2005) and Rikidozan (2004). After this it starts to get a little spotty: Another Public Enemy film called… Another Public Enemy (2008); some very successful but somewhat underwhelming blockbusters, Voice of a Murderer (2007) and Tidal Wave (2009); and then in 2010 he made a film about a man connected to the police whose daughter is kidnapped by another man whose bidding he must do to ensure her safety. Wait! He actually made two of those, they are called No Mercy and Troubleshooter.

Sol Kyung-gu in familiar territory

While most of the films that Sol lends his name to these days range from decent to quite good, the problem is that he is horrendously typecast. This is a common phenomenon in most industrialized national cinemas but Sol takes the cake. He invariably plays emasculated men who are single fathers who must protect and/or save their daughters. It is a very specific kind of typecasting and one would wonder why producers think that audiences could still accept him within such confined parameters. The truth is that these films are making a lot of cash, Troubleshooter, his most recent, scored nearly 2 million admissions on the back of his name and a thin premise. It’s little unfortunate that the formula is working as that indicates that we will have to put up with the same Sol characters for a while yet. His best recent role was probably his ethereal cameo in 2009’s wonderful A Brand New Life, which harkens back to the roles that began his career in earnest.

It seems to me that with No Mercy the producers thought they would make a film that ticks a few boxes and lends itself to being marketed overseas under the popular Asia extreme moniker. First off, it stars Sol Kyung-go, who despite my already noted reservations, is one of Korea’s most exportable stars. The premise is dark and twisted and the revenge formula that is predominant in the narrative is nothing new in Korean film. All this is well and good and the film trundles along at a good pace and is never less than engaging. The performances from Sol and the ever versatile Ryoo Seung-beom are strong and production values, if not the best Korea can offer, are top notch. The end of the film is what really gets me, it it was uninspired and worse made me look over that which had already played out very poorly.

Ryoo Seung-beom as the suspect

Sol plays Kang Min-hom a pathology professor who is frequently employed as an expert by the police. After a grisly murder takes place he and Detective Min Seo-yeong (Han Hye-jin) work together to apprehend the killer (Ryoo Seung-beom). They do so but as Kang is at the airport waiting for his daughter he receives word from the jailed suspect through an accomplice that he has his daughter and to see her alive again he must get him out. Thus he must try to mislead the police, perjure himself, taint evidence, and all sorts of degrading and dishonorable things for the sake of his daughter’s life. The past and memory feature prominently as more is revealed of the characters in the film through flashback, which is typical in melodramatic Korean cinema.

*Spoilers ahead* 

Unlike most Hollywood films but not unsurprising for the local industry, things do not turn out well. This is an interesting phenomenon in of itself but I don’t think this is the best film to discuss it with. But I think that Kang’s malfeasances and the hardships that befall him and other characters have a certain sense of inevitability to them. For example, his daughter was born with a genetic disorder, if I understood correctly she was a hemophiliac. This is both very a propos but also very trite as she will of course be sacrificed and will thus bleed for her family, it would seem this is her destiny.

The end is lifted in big spoonfuls from Oldboy (2003) and given that the production has nowhere near that prestige pic feel, this is a giant mistake which serves to derail what should have been a solid, albeit standard, thriller.

*End of Spoilers*

"Graphic" autopsy

The film tries very hard to be hard boiled and dark. There are a number of autopsy scenes that are meant go the distance to make you squirm (although they look kind of ridiculous) and even some surprisingly graphic sex scenes but they feel tacked on and do nothing to help the narrative. It’s unfortunate that the proceedings become so obvious as the film progresses because I feel that the film had quite a lot of potential. The early red herring that is supposed to explain the murder is far more interesting and original than what ends up happening. Oh well, maybe next time. In the meantime: Mr. Sol, please get a new agent before you become completely irrelevant!


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.

The Unjust (Bu-dang-geo-rae) 2010

(Opening film for KOFFIA 2011)

Ryoo Seung-wan is already a popular and respected filmmaker who has pleased fanboys (The City of Violence, 2006) and critics alike (Crying Fist, 2005), but with his new film The Unjust, he has elevated himself to a new level, from which he can now comfortably tower over the majority of his peers. Principally known for his exceptional action sequences and choreography, Ryoo is a technical wizard who has the ability to inject vitality into just about any subject. What he has done here is namely to use his strengths in action filmmaking and apply those techniques laterally into different elements of the film. While The Unjust may be a film about cops and murder, there is much less action than you would imagine from Ryoo, although it is to his credit that it never feels that way.

Hwang Jeong-min and Yu Hae-jin

With a blistering pace, a cool head, and intense focus Ryoo has fashioned a film that has successfully built on its most accomplished predecessors. It feels like a Korean and slightly more stylized version of a New Hollywood film from the 1970s. In particular I’m reminded of Serpico (1973) and The French Connection (1971) but also many others. The paranoia from that era’s conspiracy thrillers and the composed, organized, and yet organic framing and juxtaposition of those tempered filmmakers like Sydney Lumet and Billy Friedkin’s mise-en-scene, are all on evident display in this simultaneously old school and progressive masterclass of filmmaking.

The Unjust is probably the most richly conceived film to come out of Korea in 2010, although The Yellow Sea comes in as a close second. The busy, cluttered, and yet highly precise production design is more than amply matched by the constantly angled cinematography which is so richly composed and sequenced to highlight the  proliferate characters in all their physical and psychological states. In essence mirroring the deliberately convoluted and tense narrative, the mise-en-scene is dense and mesmerizing. The sound is exceptionally well-crafted and carefully orchestrated with the tight editing, and some key sequences employ parallel editing while also taking advantage of the intense and powerful music, especially the recurring, sinister horns.

Ryoo Seung-beom

The story involves a great number of characters but at the heart of the plot there is a stoic and gruff police captain Cheol-gi (Hwang Jeong-min) who has been passed over for promotion one too many times, Joo-yang a young prosecutor (Ryoo Seung-beom), ruthlessly ambitious in his profession but conflicted by his frequently compromised ethics, and Jang, a cagey gangster (Yu Hae-jin) who wears a suit and pretends to inhabit the business world despite being more comfortable stabbing someone in the back with his knife. The narrative begins with the manhunt for the killer of a young girl which has a lot at stake for the police department. Its conflict arises from the higher-ups enlisting of Cheol-gi to cover up a death and make a conviction stick to a patsy while Jang harbors ambitions to take down his rival who has Joo-yang in his pocket. As the story gets more complicated they get more entangled together.

My primary misgiving with The Unjust is that like a great number of the New Hollywood filmmakers, Ryoo Seung-wan doesn’t seem to have strong or relatable female characters in most of his work. The film is a prime example of a male-driven thriller that makes no effort to portray the opposite gender. In one sense this is sort of a blessing in disguise as all the males and therefore all the protagonists in this narrative are shown to be corrupt, ruthless, and/or motivated purely by personal gain. Moral fiber figures in some of the characters ideals but this veneer is swiftly peeled away to show the moral turpitude of everyone associated with the system and then some.

Film noir

The main theme of the day is police corruption which is something that is so frequent and dare-I-say blasé in modern Korean film that the proposition could potentially seem a little risky. I don’t know if it has ever been so pronounced and vociferous though, everyone is a very dark shade of grey in this film and the corruption is so all-consuming, depraved, and simply conducted that it kind of takes your breath away.

The performances are among the cast’s best, the script (from I Saw the Devil scribe Park Hoon-jung) is tight and menacing, the sparse choreography by Jeong Doo-hong will blow your socks off, and Ryoo’s expert and thrilling direction will keep you on the edge of your seats all throughout. This film noir is one of the best Korean movies of the last few years and I suggest that you don’t miss it!


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.

Suicide Forecast (Soo-sang-han Go-gaek-deul) 2011

I went into Suicide Forecast with little expectation, mostly because I didn't know much about it. I had seen a trailer some months back but it had no subtitles so it wasn’t much of an indication. All I could gather was that it was a comedy and that Ryoo Seung-beom wore long hair for his role as its principle protagonist. As I sat down at the CGV cinema near Downtown LA and the lights dimmed, I was at once excited by the curious opening credits sequence and taken in by the strong cinematography.

The basic elements of the plot laid themselves out quite quickly during the opening scenes. Ryoo plays Byeong-wu, an up and coming life insurance salesman who is about to hit the big league. He has a beautiful girlfriend who is concerned with his growing attention to consumer products and grooming, in a word, his vanity. We also meet a plethora of other characters who are all somehow involved in a car pileup that occurs when a petty thief who has swiped a young musician's money on the street steps into the path of a vehicle while he makes his getaway. Byeong-wu encounters a setback when one of his clients, when meets him late at night seeking comfort, commits suicide and thus loses his company money. This and other scenes, as well as the title, foreshadow the real impetus of the film, which will be a journey for Byeong-wu to become compassionate again as he races against the clock when it becomes apparent that four of his clients who signed at the same time will likely commit suicide when their two-year minimun requirement is met. This would be ruin for the young salesman so he makes it his mission to convince them to change their plans. His efforts are mostly fruitless at first but soon he learns more about them and discovers how to approach them in different ways all the while learning things about himself in the process.

An intriguing premise to be sure but the conclusion seems obvious and I hope I'm not spoiling too much by saying that it is. I’ve become used to Korean films that presented themselves as one thing, move quickly towards a conclusion only to turn into something else entirely. For the uninitiated it can be a jarring way of experiencing a film, but personally I love to have my expectations subverted. After the premise was set up I was assuming that this would be the case here because while the concept is good, it’s a little thin for the two-hour running time. So when the halfway point came about and little had moved forward and the simple ending began to seem inevitable, I grew restless and bored but mostly disappointed. Granted not all films need a big plot to create an engaging narrative, but Suicide Forecast lacked the urgency, verve, or creativity to really draw me in beyond the initial premise. It mostly relied on having interesting characters and as is common in Korean cinema, the narrative would pause to delve into their pasts and step out with richer characters. This works, to an extent, as we do get to know these characters and appreciate their motivations and trajectories. They are relatable and all quite different even though they are so tightly connected. The big dollops of melodrama are expected and perhaps necessary in such a narrative but the emotions they try to evince are not always earned.

Ryoo in the central role continues to show us how versatile a young actor he is. I remember first noticing him in the popular martial arts action-comedy Arahan (2004) but it was later in his roles as a delinquent juvenile (Crying Fist, 2005), an ex-boyfriend (Family Ties, 2006), and an entitled Magistrate (The Servant, 2010) that made me notice his considerable range. Once again he shows us that he can inhabit a character unlike the previous ones he has incarnated, although perhaps this time it is not such a major departure. While I think he did a good job with Byeong-wu, I don’t know that the character was as unique as he probably needed to be to fit well into this kind of an environment.

After a flabby and expository midsection, Suicide Forecast boils down to its inevitable conclusion. I knew it was coming and what to expect but despite myself and not completely to my surprise, the intense and emotional (albeit saccharine) mini-conclusions as each character finishes their journey are cathartic and well-rendered. As sentimental as the ending was, it was also a saving grace of sorts for the film. Following a curious opening act and a meandering middle, it embraced itself by lowering its ambitions and playing to its strengths.