The Weekly Review Round-up is a weekly feature which brings together all available reviews of Korean films in the English language (and sometimes French) that have recently appeared on the internet. It is by no means a comprehensive feature and additions are welcome (email pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com). It appears every Friday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News, and the Korean Box Office Update. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site.
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.
Having more or less caught up with all of the this past
summer’s major Korean releases, the first thing that comes to mind is that if I
ever see a motorbike in a Korean film again, it will be far, far too soon. The two main culprits in my eyes are Sector 7 and Quick, and the thing that they share in common is Yoon Je-kyoon, the producer who was also the director behind such hits as My Boss, My Hero (2001), Sex Is Zero (2002), Miracle on 1st Street (2007), and Haeundae (2009). Not too long ago I decided
to savage Sector 7 in my review as I
felt it was a disaster that needed to be called out for the contempt it showed
its audience, thinking moviegoers would be content with novel 3D effects at the
expense of a solid story and engaging characters. Thankfully spectators rejected the film as it suffered one
of the most calamitous post-opening weekend drops in Korean film history.
Quick is not as
bad a film but it does demonstrate a similar lack of respect towards its
viewers. What I mean to say is
that it’s an overburdened everything-but-the-kitchen-sink comedy-actioneer that
is designed to appeal to everyone but could never hope to satisfy anyone. There is very little that the
filmmakers didn’t throw in to the mix in a bid to attract viewers. There’s k-pop, gangsters, biker gangs,
youth violence, washboard abs, scantily clad women, inefficient police,
romance, and of course melodrama, all that in addition to the heavy doses of
action and comedy.
Flying bikes
Gi-soo is a former bike gang leader who now works as a
speedy bike messenger. One day he
is sent to pick up Ah-rom, a major k-pop star, who turns out to be his
ex-girlfriend. She puts on his
helmet but while he was away, someone has put a bomb in it. Now he must do an unknown man’s bidding
with the police and an old rival on his tail.
Quick is primarily
an action film and it borrows its concept from the popular 90s Hollywood summer
blockbuster Speed (1994), starring Keanu
Reeves, it has more or less borrowed its name too. The action is relentless and the filmmakers cram in
pile-ups, explosions, and as much speed as they can into the narrative. I must say that the action sequences
are for the most part convincing but they are just variations on a theme and
don’t offer us anything we haven’t seen before. There’s also a tendency to blend the comedy in with the
action, these efforts, rather than add up to something better, mostly fall
flat.
Funny bikes
Comedy is a large part of Quick but I think it was either a poor choice or badly handled as
it is the cause of most of the film’s many problems. It’s not particularly funny and, as I’ve already mentioned,
it doesn’t blend well with the action, but beyond that it poses two significant
issues. Since a lot of the film is
played for laughs, there is no real urgency and the stakes feel very low, a big
no-no for an action film. Secondly,
I found the two leads to be terrible, mainly because they have no comic
timing. I know that Lee Min-ki’s
new film Spellbound as been received
very enthusiastically but here he’s just a pretty face and his performance is
hamfisted but also very unbalanced, Gi-Soo never felt like a character. Kang Ye-won’s is not someone I was very
familiar with beforehand but I do recognize her from last year’s Hello Ghost and she seems to be a Yoon
Je-kyoon stalwart, this being the fourth film of his she has starred in. Again she is a pretty face who only
seems capable of overacting and her grating performance quickly overstays its
welcome.
Sexy bikes
Quick does feel
like a missed opportunity though.
At times, with all the different factions facing off against eachother,
I felt this could have been like an anarchic Kim Sang-jin (Attack the Gas Station, 1999; Kick
the Moon, 2001) film but it’s far too consumerist and cynical to pull that
off. The film lacks a raison
d’être, it is merrily an excuse for fast vehicles and pyrotechnics but rather
than reinvent the genre or offer up an original style from its mise-en-scene,
it expects the money being thrown at the stunts and explosions to impress
rather than the way in which they are presented.
Forgive the bad pun but I think the film was made a little too quickly, elements designed to draw in viewers were thrown together, explosions
littered the marketing, numerous mid-level stars were cast in small roles but
at no point was any effort put into the story, the characters, or the style of
the film. What we’re left with
looks more like a drawn-out music video than a feature film and that is
definitely not what I go to the movies for.
Still not too much news at the beginning of the year but there a few pieces looking at the year ahead and the one just past as well as a brand new English trailer for The Front Line as it gets ready to bow in the US courtesy of Well Go Entertainment.
KOREAN CINEMA NEWS
Big-Budget Films to Open in 2012
While 2011 saw the release of some novel, genre-defying works, not many local films aside from Sunny and War of the Arrows (a.k.a. Arrow, The Ultimate Weapon) managed to draw crowds at the box office. This year, a lineup of big-budget films featuring the return of big stars await moviegoers. (The Korea Times, January 5, 2012)
Best News Stories of the Year
Twitch, in its annual best news stories feature, ranked the Spike Lee directed Oldboy reboot as one of 2011's best film news stories. The project has had a few setbacks with both Colin Firth, Clive Owen, and Mara Rooney all turning down lead roles but is still scheduled to start shooting in the next few months with star Josh Brolin in the main role. (Twitch, January 10, 2012)
Which Way, My Way?
The dramatization of a true war-time story that spans years, continents, and changing friendships and enmities, My Way is director Kang Je-kyu’s comeback after seven years. My Way deals with a true story that is practically legend. In the late 1930s, a man from Joseon ends up going to China and the Soviet Union towards Germany and finally ends up on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. (Korean Cinema Today, January 8, 2012)
Three Korean Projects Selected to HAF
Hong Kong - Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary this March with a record 32 selections, including three from South Korea. These are director Jeon Soo-il’s Another Country, Kim Baek-jun’s Monsters and Lee Hae-jun’s My Dictator. The festival chose these from more than 200 submissions from over 45 countries and regions. The final selection represents 20 different territories including Australia, China, India, Japan, and Malaysia. (KoBiz, January 6, 2012)
Crossing the Streams...
Up until this point in time the only real option for streaming a large amount of content in theUK has been through LoveFilm. Yesterday the big US company Netflix launched their service in the UK and they’ve undercut LoveFilm on the cost of their service (that’s on the standard price, LoveFilm are understandably offering promotional prices for the next few months) and, again, while the Netflix offering is limited to some degree there’s also a lot of good content on there – some of it in HD. (New Korean Cinema, January 10, 2012)
Martin Cleary takes a look at the frustrating state of the availability of Korean fils in the UK over on his new blog. (New Korean Cinema, January 6, 2012)
Rotterdam Takes Three More Korean Films
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced its line-up to include three more Korean films in addition to the previously announced A Fish, the Tiger Awards Competition’s first 3D film. The film by Park Hong-min will be joined by Roh Gyeong-tae’s Black Dove, Kim Kyung-mook’s Stateless Things and Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives. The latter three films will be in the festival’s Spectrum section. The section will show 72 features and documentaries from 32 countries. (KoBiz, January 10, 2012)
Foreign Koreanness Captured in the Movies
With the recent release of the first two trailers for Papa, it looks like mainstream Korean cinema will continue to wrestle with the issue of immigration and multiculturalism into the new year. As new as this theme may seem for Korean film, Papa actually follows in the footsteps of last year’s very successful Punch and 2010’s almost equally successful He's on Duty, as well as a string of independent films that addressed the same theme. (The Korea Herald, January 5, 2012)
Michael Stipe Produces Gay Korean-American Film
Former REM frontman Michael Stipe is the executive producer behind a new short film of a gay Korean man who yearns for a family, which the director used to come out to his own parents. The short, entitled Dol, will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival this year, Indie music news site Electric Banana reports. (pinknews.co.uk January 10, 2012)
My Sassy Girl to Be Made Into a Drama
On January 11 it was announced that the drama production company “Lemon Rain” would produce a TV drama version of My Sassy Girl with “Shincine Communication Co.” In order to find a charming and perfect script they are holding a script contest starting from February 1 to March 30. The original film My Sassy Girl is a classic Korean romantic comedy that jumpstarted Cha Tae Hyun andJeon Ji Hyun’s acting careers. (soompi.com, January 10, 2012)
Oldboy Production Delayed Until May; Clive Owen Passes on Villain Role
The inability to cast, plus Brolin’s press commitments to MIB 3, has forced production of Oldboy to be pushed back to May of this year. Colin Firth was the biggest name to be attached to play as the villain, but he passed on the role, which was then offered to Clive Owen. But according to a report from Jeff Snieder over at Variety, “don’t expect Clive Owen to play the villain.” (Fused Film, January 7, 2012)
INTERVIEW
Director Park Hong-min
Director Park Hong-min’s A Fish is about a professor who searches for his runaway wife. It compares this life to the afterlife, and humans on land to souls in the sea. A Fish was revealed to the world at the 16th Busan International Film Festival and has also been invited to compete at the 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam’s annual Tiger Awards Competition. Director Park is now making final adjustments to the film’s sound effects and computer graphics before he heads off to Rotterdam. (Korean Cinema Today, January 5, 2012)
Korean Cinema News is a weekly feature which provides wide-ranging news coverage on Korean cinema, including but not limited to: features; festival news; interviews; industry news; trailers; posters; and box office. It appears every Wednesday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site.
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.
Kim Sang-jin is one of the biggest names of modern Korean
cinema. He got his start with
early films such as Money in the Account
(1995), Gangster Lessons (1996), and Two Cops 3 (1998) but always as a
contracted director behind a big producer like Kang Woo-suk. It wasn’t until 1999 that he got his
real start with the anarchic hit Attack
the Gas Station, which was stamped with Kim’s signature style that has
since led to hit after hit. He’s
not the first name that comes to mind when considering the box office clout of
Korean directors, but you would be hard pressed to name a director who has been a
more consistent and impressive force on the Korean box office charts. Attack
the Gas Station became the second highest grossing Korean film of 1999,
subsequently: 2001’s Kick the Moon came in at no. 3; Jail Breakers wound up at no. 4 in 2002;
2004’s Ghost House also had a no. 4
finish; and Kidnapping Granny K
landed just outside the top 10 in 2007.
The interesting thing about all of these hits is that though
they are all quite similar in tone and structure, they were all written by
different people. Kim has actually
never written any of the films he’s directed, which is a testament to the force
of his directing style and how recognizable it is on its own. Kim’s best and most enduring works have
been deranged blends of gang and youth violence (Attack the Gas Station, Kick
the Moon), prison and romance (Jailbreakers),
or horror and melodrama (Ghost House). The common denominators between his
films have been warring factions, anarchy, comedy, and immense climaxes between
multiple large groups, a funny thing to be known for perhaps but very effective and
memorable nonetheless.
Do-hun (Kim Joo-hyeok) caught in the act
In 2010, Kim made a follow-up to his original smash
hit Attack the Gas Station. The sequel had little of the impact of its
predecessor and 11 years later it was no longer relevant to audiences, failing to leave an
impression on the box office. Late
last year a new Kim film found its way into theaters with little to no fanfare. I first heard about Fighting Spirit the week before it opened but I
wasn’t aware of who made it at first.
Had I not known that it was a Kim Sang-jin film as I sat down to watch it, I
probably never would have guessed it.
Do-hun (Kim Joo-hyeok) is the star pitcher for the Lotte
Giants, he is nearing the end of a brilliant career but he’s become arrogant
and complacent in the wake of his success. He’s been kicked out of his house after cheating on his wife
(Kim Seon-ah) and is soon demoted to the minors. He must now prove his worth to his teammates and to his
estranged wife and children. This
brief synopsis seems to indicate a typical up-down-up sports trajectory of a
fallen hero who will rise again but actually that isn’t really the case. It’s nearly incidental that he’s a
baseball player as the sporting angle is a front for what the film really is, a
family melodrama. Do-hoon’s wife
Yoo-ran develops terminal cancer and this is the real crux of the film. In fact, Fighting Spirit is essentially a cross between GLove and The Last Blossom,
two mediocre 2011 films that appeared earlier in the year.
Park Cheol-min in a rare moment of calm
Kim Joo-hyeok is an actor I quite like who impressed me with his effortless performance in The Servant (2010) and has been doing
steady work for years but audiences so far have not responded to his being
recast as a leading man as both of his 2011 starring roles, the other being In Love and the War, have been major
flops. It’s hard to blame him
since the scripts were so lacking but I wonder if he shouldn’t be more
discerning with the projects he chooses to take on. Kim Seon-ah (She's on Duty, 2005; S-Diary, 2004), as Do-hun’s long-suffering wife, is a little
cold in her role, thereby nudging the audience to side with the boyish and
charming Do-hun, despite his infidelities. The representation of her character is proof that as gifted
as Kim Sang-jin is, he’s never been particularly adept at handling female
characters, they always lack depth in his films. Park Cheol-min, who plays the Lotte Giants minor team coach,
is one of those working actors who appears again and again in Korean
cinema. Last year alone he had
eight roles, including Clash of the Families, Sector 7, Spellbound, and Suicide Forecast, which would seem to indicate that he’s well
liked. He’s a very over-the-top
performer who tends to grin a lot and gesticulate with mock bravado. His style never really changes: it’s more a case of putting him in the
right situations. For instance his
performance works in Clash of the Families while it is miserably out of place in Sector 7, thankfully he just about fits into this film.
I understand why Fighting
Spirit didn’t make any money:
it doesn’t really know what it wants to be and it is very lacking in
passion. It’s by the numbers in
its characterizations, plot elements, and resolutions but irregular in its tone
and narrative. What this amounts
to in the end is a great director who, like Do-hun, was at the top of his game
but seems to have lost his way.
Kim Sang-jin needs to get back on the saddle before he becomes a
footnote in Korean cinema.
Local business had another tough frame with only one midlevel opening and diminishing returns from holdovers as Hollywood continued to trump domestic offerings. 1.62 million tickets were sold this past weekend, a marginal increase of last year's comparable weekend whereas the Korean film market share was down to 35% from 75%.
Mission Impossible IV continued its remarkable run, banking another 477,851 admissions, though that was down a little over 50%. With 6,243,796 tickets sold to date it's still another 1.5 million away from Transformers 3's 2011 crown which may be mission impossible but we'll see if Ethan Hunt and crew can pull it off.
Wonderful Radio, in the midst of terrible reviews had a so-so opening with 281,296. Assuming a less than encouraging word of mouth, the picture may see a quick exit from theaters, especially as it loses screens and business in two weeks to lunar day releases.
The second Sherlock Holmes lost about half its business in its third outing, garnering 223,500 sales. It looks set to cross the two million mark, which will likely be its last major milestone as it continues to diminish through the month.
Perfect Game has crossed the one million mark but has done so with little fanfare as the well-received baseball pic has added 133,580 to its total this weekend. A mediocre performance for a big holiday release.
Meanwhile My Way dropped all the way to number 6 as it added 112,905 admissions and has now inched over the 2 million mark, so much for 10 million!
Spellbound at number 9 sold another 46,231 tickets as it winds down its run and is now very close to the 3 millin mark.
Jesus Hospital is the Korean film opening next week and I can't imagine it will be in any position to boost domestic ticket sales. We'll have to wait until the following Lunar Day weekend when a number of high profile releases find their way into theaters. MI4 may spend a fifth week on top, unless The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opens big.
It’s amazing to witness what can be done with little resources and in 2011, a year filled with high-falutin, hollow, and very disappointing blockbusters, there were many films that did just that. One in particular managed to do the most with the least. The Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) has been training some of the peninsula’s best talent since the 1980s, including Bong Joon-ho, Im Sang-soo, and Kim Tae-gyun, and these days, as it produces four feature-length projects per year, it looks set to develop an even larger pool of talent. Not long ago I discussed the importance of Korean film schools in a piece on the Korean National University of Arts (K’Arts) short Metamorpheses. The technical competence of Korean films is due in no small part to the high quality film academies in the country and this becomes only more evident now that the student-produced shorts and features from these institutions gain wider exposure.
Bleak Night is one of KAFA’s student features and going into the film it’s hard to say that knowing this didn’t completely change the way I looked at it. I’m generally not a fan of student films and not just because of low production values and a lack of experience. Oftentimes they are pretentious, lazy, and/or cocky and rather than being diamonds in the rough, they are frequently vanity projects from people who either don’t have what it takes or have no intention of trying to make a career out of filmmaking. Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, this is the purpose that film societies at college universities serve and the world is all the better for it, however I would rather not subject myself to these less than enticing offerings. I also speak from experience, as I too was one of these cocky student filmmakers in my Dublin salad days.
There have been more technically proficient student films out of Korea, the aforementioned Metamorpheses is an excellent example of poly-generic adroitness but Bleak Night has what few films possess, no matter how experienced or talented the makers are. It is an extremely mature work: the characters are few, the plot is simple, and the setting is familiar but they belie a complex and devastating character study with reminded me of the eye-opening and cathartic realism I experienced when I saw The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005).
Lazarescu was the first Romanian film I saw and still stands as my favorite European film made after the turn of the millennium. The films that came out of Romania at that time achieved something that I had never experienced before. A friend and I, after being blindsided by Lazarescu following a random screening selection at the 2006 Dublin International Film Festival, hailed it as ‘the death of postmodernism!’ We were over-excited film students who tended to roll our eyes at the mere mention of ‘postmodernism’ or other woefully over-loaded academia terms like the ‘Lacanian mirror stage’. Lazarescu, and the films that followed it like 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), came as a breath of fresh air as they seemed honest, straightforward, and devoid of intellectualism yet they were still exceptionally complex.
The biggest liberty that Bleak Night takes in its film style is its fragmented chronology which jumps to and fro without warning. Titles and exposition can seem contrived but unsignalled time jumps can be far more dangerous if the audience can’t figure out what’s going on. Thankfully the young filmmakers give us just enough information to keep our footing and more importantly respect us enough to allow us to figure some things out for ourselves. In fact a great deal of the film’s success derives from this risky trait. We are never told what has happened and we are required to trust ourselves to understand what is going on during moments we don’t see and to decipher unuttered thoughts in the protagonists’ minds.
I don’t want to say too much about the film as I think it is better to let it reveal itself to you but essentially there are three friends, some bullying, and a suicide which serves as the starting point of the narrative but not of the story. Lee Je-hoon, as the bully Gi-tae, has won numerous newcomer awards this year for his lead role in Bleak Night and his supporting turn in war pic The Front Line (2011). Sure enough his performance is nothing short of a revelation. In his role he is completely grounded and never falls into the easy trap of overacting. He says so much with his few words and even more with his silences, he reveals the truth about his character little by little, always taking you by surprise but never forsaking credibility. He reminds me of a younger and more subtle Ryoo Seung-beom (The Unjust, 2010; Suicide Forecast, 2011), an actor whom I like very much, and I can only see great things in his future.
Friendship lies at the heart of Bleak Night or at least what defines the bond between friends. At different points in the narrative, the three friends fight and betray each other, they move through different circles, one going so far as to transfer out of school, yet at times they are also extremely loyal and share their free time together, throwing an old baseball around at an abandoned train station, itself a foreboding metaphor for their youthful, transient relationships. There are other boys in the school who are part of the group during school hours in the classroom and the trio also have families, though Gi-tae has no mother and seems to fend for himself, but Bleak Night never dwells on the characters’ lives outside of the group, a rare and welcome change from the melodramatic tendencies of Korean cinema.
29-year old writer and director Yoon Sung-hyun excels with his debut feature, demonstrating a subtle but commanding grasp of his characters. His (justified) confidence as a filmmaker allows him to strip out any flourishes leaving a bare bones mise-en-scene which eschews music and ostentatious cinematography in favor of intimate character framing, well-timed silences, and an austere, dark, but also gorgeous color palette which creeps under your skin. A superb film from emerging talents which is not to be missed.
For the first WEEKLY REVIEW ROUND-UP of 2012, a few reviews for new releases in Korea and a lot of pieces on older Korean films which is always nice to see.
The Weekly Review Round-up is a weekly feature which brings together all available reviews of Korean films in the English language (and sometimes French) that have recently appeared on the internet. It is by no means a comprehensive feature and additions are welcome (email pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com). It appears every Friday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News, and the Korean Box Office Update. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site.
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.
Kang Woo-suk is a big name in Korean cinema. He is the director behind the Two Cops (1993-98) and Public Enemy (2002-08) trilogies and
helmed the blockbusters Silmido (2003)
and Hanbando (2005), as well last
year’s big mystery film Moss. He’s been around for a long time and
has had a big hand in shaping the industry as it stands today. In the 1990s he formed Cinema Service,
which is now one of the country’s top film producers. Like a more prolific Kang Je-gyu, Kang specializes in
blockbusters and doesn’t seem to know how not to make an event picture. Earlier this year however, his new film
GLove was released. A baseball pic with a big star (Jeong
Jae-yeong) and a rather modest concept by Kang’s standards.
GLove does feature
a number of typical Kang features:
a male-centric narrative populated by his regulars, such as Jeong and
Kang Shin-il; an ambiguous protagonist who has fallen from grace; a lack of
subtlety; and a very long running time (144 minutes). If it sounds like I’m criticizing him I will admit that I find
Kang to be a very limited director though what he does, with his big, bombastic
style, he does quite well and Public
Enemy (one of the first Korean films I ever saw) still stands as one of my
favorites. That said, in this new
territory, Kang seems a little out of his depth. He recognizes the codes of the sports film and uses them to
his advantage, the mise-en-scene
is typically strong though not par with his other films, especially the
sumptuously filmed Moss (2010). What Kang does struggle with is the
saccharine melodrama, he doesn’t do a bad job but he is not subtle in his
approach, not that many Korean filmmakers are, but it’s clear that it’s not his
area of expertise.
The star and his agent: Sang-nam (Jeong Jae-yeong) and Charles (Jo Jin-woong)
To begin with the concept is terribly cloying. Baseball superstar Kim Sang-nam (Jeong Jae-yeong) falls from grace
and is suspended, in order to rebuild his image his agent Charles (Jo Jin-woong) suggests that he start teaching baseball at
a school for the hearing-impaired.
Stubborn, moody, and resistant at first he soon starts to take a shine to
the kids and begins to shapes these diamonds in the rough with the help of teachers Gyo-gam (Kang Shin-il) and Joo-won (Yoo Seon).
From the outset there is little doubt as to what you will be
subjected to: the bullying of deaf
children; group crying; the melting of cold hearts; redemption; etc. On these counts the film does not
disappoint. Korean cinema is rife
with mute or deaf characters harboring or enduring traumas without the ability
to express them. I briefly wrote
about these protagonists in my review for last year’s Poongsan and it occurs to me now that they are also an ideal
cinematic representations of ‘han’, which I discussed vis-à-vis mothers in my
piece on Mama (2011) earlier this
week. Of course normally we only
have to deal with one of these characters in Korean films but with GLove we get a whole school of them,
which of course comes with a whole lot of baggage. It’s nearly as though the depiction of the hearing-impaired
built to a crescendo in 2011, ending of course with the worldwide media frenzy
surrounding Silenced, which resulted
in new laws being passed in Korea.
The teachers: Gyo-gam (Kang Shin-il) and Joo-won (Yoo Seon)
Sadly GLove is not
as interesting as it could be, which is no surprise. It’s most like A
Barefoot Dream, Korea’s 2010 selection for the Oscars, which was a strong
feature but also bogged down by saccharine melodrama. The strongest aspect of the film is Jeong Jae-yeong’s
performance whom I think is one of the best actors in Korea. Primarily identified as a bad guy or a comedian, Jeong has shown great range in the last few years and turned in some
of the best performances in Korean cinema. His deadpan comedy was the anchor of Someone Special (2004) and Going
By the Book (2007), while his vulnerability was aching in Castaway on the Moon (2009), and he rightly
won a Grand Bell award for his menacing performance in last year’s Moss. His turn in GLove
is not on the level of the previous films but he plays the arrogant, stubborn, and
stoic baseball star to a tee and as always he’s very funny. Special mention should go to Jo
Jin-woon who plays his hard-working agent. Jo, who has been in Gangster
High (2006), A Frozen Flower
(2008), and The Front Line (2011),
had never impressed me before but now I can see why he appears in so many
films. He balances the
good-natured and frustrated elements of the character very well, and his
chemistry with Jeong is excellent.
Besides a few strong performances, GLove was a disappointment but it was a strong, confident
production. It’s just too long,
not particularly engaging, and very predictable. I like to see directors trying something new but maybe Kang
should stick to what he’s good at, I’m not sure how versatile he is. I do enjoy baseball films though and still have
two Korean ones to watch from 2011, FightingSpirit and Perfect Game, I hope at
least one can bring it home.
