Kiss Me, Kill Me 킬미 (Kill Me) [2009] • South Korea

This one's very funny, one of those films in which the director and the actors do a dance of comic timing. Hye-jeong Kang is always good but Shin Hyeon-Jun turns out to be a real comic treat. This is an action flick with lots of humor.

Jin-young (Kang) is devastated after a breakup with her long time partner and wants to kill herself, but she wants to do it with flair so she hires a hit man to take her out. Hyun-jun (Shin) thinks he is hired to kill someone else and is surprised to discover Jin-young has slipped herself into the place of his intended target. Yeah, it's an "assassin falls in love with his target" story but the performances of the two leads makes this one a winner. The script is a little chaotic at times, lots of coincidences that challenge a suspension of disbelief, but if you just go with the flow it's a fun ride.

The film's ending unravels instead of tying things up but it's not a deal breaker. In a way, the whole film can be seen as a series of sketches that just parade by instead of building upon one another to form a cohesive whole, and that may be a valid criticism depending on the angle of entry the viewer chooses. Thriller? Romantic Comedy? Action flick? It's all of those, and it's one of the things I like about South Korean cinema. They do mashups, and they do them well, always playing with expectations and throwing in surprises.

If you are a fan of either of the two leads you will enjoy Kiss Me, Kill Me. It's fun and entertaining precisely because it's full of not what you'd expect.

★★★★

Director: Jong-hyeon Yang
Starring: Hye-jeong Kang, Hyeon-jun Shin, Hyeon-a Kim, Do-bin Park

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Secret Reunion (Ui-hyeong-je) [2010] • South Korea

This is a Hollywood style cat and mouse buddy flick with good action sequences, good acting, and a thick plot with international intrigue which ends happily ever after. It stars a couple of South Korea's top box office attractions in Kang-ho Song and Dong-won Kang. Song plays his usual bumbling yet lovable and competent self, and Kang ups his acting ante from stud muffin to scary good hit-man. They have great chemistry together. It's gritty and bloody and, because it seems to follow Song wherever he goes, it's sprinkled with bits of humor throughout.

So what went wrong? Nothing, really, until the deus ex machina at the end. It's probably never been more true than it is with Secret Reunion that a bad ending can ruin a film (for some people). It seems to have bothered critics more than audiences, as Secret Reunion is South Korea's highest grossing film of the year so far. But it also seems to have disappointed one of its actors. As Song put it in an interview "If I were the director, I would have chosen an ending for "Secret Reunion" in which the pain lasts longer". In other words, no living happily ever after. South Korea has a tradition of ending films a little differently than most Hollywood films. People usually die instead of flying off into the sunset. I say it's no big deal and there is a lot f fun to be had with Secret Reunion. Just close your eyes, stop the DVD Player, or walk out a few minutes early f you don't want any cheese in your omelet.

★★★★

Director: Hun Jang
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Dong-won Kang, Kyeong-min Go, Seung-do Han, Su-ho Ha

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Beast Stalker 证人 (Ching yan) [2008] • Hong Kong

There isn't one single monster in this (what's up with that?), although Nick Cheung looks pretty spooky with his fake eyeball and possesses some über-human qualities like always being out of the blue and into the right place always at the right time, moving at speeds faster than light, and getting bashed in the face with a rock and not bleeding. The (contrived and typical) story construction which explores the tug of war among duty, friendship, love, and responsibility is done well, and Nicholas Tse and Cheung both turn in top notch performances, as does the little girl. All the acting is pretty good when you can actually see what's going on. I had to stop frame and inch through a scene on a bridge/overpass where they hung the little girl over the edge. I wonder what the film could have been without being a stylized action pic.

Jingchu Zhang also stars but she seems to come up unremarkable in manly action movies like Overheard, Protégé and this one.

★★★

Director: Dante Lam
Starring: Nicholas Tse, Jingchu Zhang, Nick Cheung, Philip Keung, Esther Kwan
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Duelist (Hyeongsa) [2005] • South Korea

I'm a big fan of of director Lee Myung-se's M, consider it a top ten favorite film of all time. It's an audio visual masterpiece. The man has undeniable multimedia chops with an unconventional approach to storytelling.

Duelist shares M's visual beauty along with its fragmented narrative style. It's not hard to get the basic story in either film but you do need to step back and just go with the flow rather than keeping notes on how A leads to B leads to C, and so on. Set in the Joseon Dynasty, the story here is your basic good (in this case) girl cop falling for the bad guy she's supposed to capture and put behind bars, with the romantic angle competing with, and coloring, the chase. There's a mystical twist to it too, wherein the would be lovers don't do a lot of talking to one another, instead, they fight. With swords. This allows director Lee to stage some dramatic and very elegant battle scenes, but the motivation here is romance so the dueling is presented as dance rather than combat, and probably won't satisfy fans of traditional action movies. There's a lot of killing but very little blood. The battles are emotional, internalized and stylized without all the grunting and macho posturing that usually accompanies this kind of action.

One of the many dualities of the film is the unrefined, gut level nature of the cops versus the refined ways of aristocratic bad guys. Another is the way the cat and mouse game shifts back and forth between sleuthing and the romance. The Duelist knows the young lady cop is infatuated with him, that his capable mysteriousness in matters of crime and conflict occupies her heart as well as her head. So he toys with her. She is his equal in combat but not in love and he uses this to his advantage.


Ha Ji-won shines in her role as the young police officer who plays the mouse to the Duelist cat. She gets to be goofy, girly, and kick ass all at once. You can tell she is doing most of her own stunts and she's got surprisingly good comic timing. This film is also quite funny at times. A lot of the humor is of the bumbling kind but it's not cheap slapstick. It's more good natured (unfair to characterize it as) loser type struggle. Veteran actor Ahn Sung-Kee, who elevates every film he is in, plays mentor to Ha Ji-won, and he's just great. Supermodel Kang Dong-Won plays the Duelist, named "Sad Eyes", and does a respectable job of playing a hairstyle with depth.

Duelist is a beautiful, if loosely constructed film that won't satisfy hardcore action fans. For me, even though the fighting scenes were mostly stylized dance pieces, and the film wouldn't work without them, there were just too many of them for me to want to watch the film again and enjoy all the other good stuff about it. Take a look at the clip below to see how awesome this guy is at shooting film and marrying music to it.

★★★

Director: Lee Myung-se
Starring: Ha Ji-won, Ahn Sung-Kee, Kang Dong-Won

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Breathless (Ddongpari) [2009] • South Korea

This little blurb will contain spoilers but it doesn't really need them because the film was rotten before I got here. I can't imagine how anyone could enjoy, let alone step away and appreciate, a film like this. It's ninety minutes of name calling punctuated by ass-kicking. It may not be fair to criticize subtitled translations of name calling but the word choices are terribly redundant and unimaginative. The ass-kicking was mostly just off camera so I give it points for that. The story, however, and character development, get zero points.

Breathless tells the story of the cycle of violence: that kids who grow up watching their fathers beat the crap out of their mothers grow up to beat the crap out of people too. Then somebody comes along and beats the crap out of them. In the first fifteen minutes of this film the main character spits on two women and hits them in the face. The second of the two women is a high school girl and she gets hit hard enough it knocks her unconscious. She wakes up and responds to the beating like some sort of pick-up line because, guess what? She's also grown up watching her father beat the crap out of her mother. So the two of them form a friendship.

The high school girl has a brother who, since he's also grown up watching his father beat the crap out of his mother, has to do some ass-kicking himself. He picks on his sister a bit and ultimately takes a job that leads to his kicking the ass of the main ass-kicker. Is it really going to spoil it to say that this ass-kicking of the ass-kicker is fatal? I mean, can't you see that coming a mile away?

In the end, the cycle continues. Yes, we all know this story, but we know the stories ahead of time of many of the movies we love. The trick is to create characters we care about and tell the story in some imaginative way. This film doesn't do that.

★

Director: Yang Ik-Joon
Starring: Yang Ik-Joon, Kot-bi Kim, Man-shik Jeong, Lee Hwan

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Tidal Wave (Haeundae) Tsunami [2009] • South Korea

Tsunami, or Tidal Wave, or whatever, is a great big huge gigantic disaster. The first ten minutes introduces about a dozen characters all of whom you'll hope are dead in the next ten minutes. It's the strangest character development I've ever seen. There's no subtlety or differentiation to them. They're all loud, extremely loud, obnoxious idiots. And they all hit one another, a lot. There are three things at play here: stupid, godawful, and annoying as hell. The director of the film, in a pre-emptive strike sort of way, has acknowledged that the special effects aren't very good (i.e., very expensive) so he's going to treat us to some good ol' Korean charm. FAIL. I hope this film never sees the light of day outside Korea because it could set back by decades the good reputation of that country's cinematic output. The acting is bad (WTF Sol Kyung-gu & Ha Ji-won), the myriad plot lines are predictable and groan out loud unpleasant, the special effects are cheesy, and, well .... you get the point. If you ever get roped into seeing this movie I promise that you won't believe how bad it is.

I watched the international version that cuts 13 minutes from the Korean domestic release. Thank gosh for small favors.

★★

Rainbow Eyes (Ga-myeon) (2007) • South Korea

Artificially tense and hip cop and killer thriller that threatens to go over the top throughout but gets stuck motorcycling around the rim of its contrived story, complete with coincidental fireworks over a broken bridge in the film's climactic conclusion. Min-Sun Kim is fun as the film's girl good guy cop, albeit paint-by-number.

★★

My Mom's New Boyfriend (2008) • USA

A few chuckles, a little bit of plot, and some star power. I wish there'd been more Selma Blair on screen. I like her but ... her part could have been played by anybody.

It's kind of scary when Meg Ryan smiles (her face is a small disaster and her lips are ill-freaky) but other than that, even despite that, she looks good and can still pull off her Megness like no one else. There are a couple scenes that are pure Meg: when Antonio is fawning over how hot she looks, she responds "Yeah! I know!" Only Meg could do that and not make everybody throw-up. In another scene she gets mad at him and throws a fit, punching and screaming into the air. Antonio just watches until its over and is speechless (so was I) but for a genuinely soft-spoken "Wow." It is nice to see those scenes. Meg's still got it and Antonia doesn't seem like he's going to lose it any time soon.

It is a pleasant surprise to see how good Antonio looks. Maybe I just haven't seen him in a while. I've always liked him in comedies. If you like Antonio, you will love the scene where he ends up with each hand in a glass of water (or white wine?). Antonio could charm the socks off ... I dunno, somebody who really needed their socks.

That's what these kinds of movies are all about, right? How good do our stars look? How much do we enjoy seeing our favorite celebrities prance about ... acting.

There's a light twist at the end of the film so everybody can be happy. Upon reflection it explained a few unanswered hmmmm's from previous scenes but I didn't see it coming because I wasn't expecting it; I didn't need it and I had forgotten about the earlier scenes because this isn't a movie you keep score on.

★★★

Shiri (1999) • South Korea

There is a scene in this movie where two good guys are sitting in a large empty auditorium facing the stage, their backs to the rear entrances. They aare there as bait, waiting for the bad guys. An entire SWAT team is positioned around the circumference of the auditorium, in the rafters, the bleachers, the high priced alcoves, ready to shoot the bad guys whwn they arrive. The tree bad guys, well, two bad guys and a bad girl, enter the auditorium and walk about half way down the aisle. The shooting begins. Chaos ensues. Nobody gets killed. Cut to a very long hallway that has a dozen or more of these SWAT commandos, presumably highly trained marksmen and women, chasing the bad girl, firing at her. Missing! She is able to return a few over the shoulder/behind the back shots and take out a few SWAT guys. Then she takes one in the shoulder. "Ouch" she says as she gets away.

There's another scene where an entire SWAT team bursts into a room where they know the bad guy is going to be, with their guns a-blazin'. The bad guy jumps up and starts to run away. He stops in a doorway and takes a few shots at the team.

I can't go on.

★