Tuesday, March 22, 2011 -

And....No, The title isn't me making any references about myself transitioning to adulthood with my love of comics and cartoons strangely intact...

Whoever says I don't give Korean movies or dramas a fair shake??! While I think most Korean shows are largely formulaic and over-wrought dramas (albeit with some really cute chicks)...I am going to be reviewing a Korean movie for today's post!.....One of the best in fact...the only Korean recipient of the Grand Prix award of the Cannes film festival.....Park Chan Wook's Old Boy....


Old Boy:

If you think Korean movies are just fluffy, light, romantic melodramas with nonsensical plotlines and cardboard thin characters….well you’ll be right 99% of the time but Old Boy is one of the rare ones to fall within that 1% category of Korean films that actually elevate the medium to a whole different level.

Loosely based on a Japanese Manga of the same name, Old Boy is the second film in Park Chan Wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” and the recipient of the coveted Grand Prix award from the Cannes film festival.

The story focuses on a middle-aged wage slave called Oh-Dae-Su who gets detained at the police station after a night of drinking and bad behavior on the night of his daughter’s birthday. His best friend bails him out and when he turns his back for a moment, Oh-Dae-Su vanishes without a trace on the rainy streets.

Oh-Dae-Su spends the next 15 years mysteriously imprisoned in an apartment. A small television set and 3 square meals of Gyoza a day are all the luxuries he is afforded. He experiences important events and watches the outside world change only through his television set.

He shadow-boxes and trains every day in the hopes that one day he can exact bloody revenge on his mysterious captor. He scars and inserts wire filaments in the flesh of his arms to mark the years that pass him by. He imagines fire ants crawling all over his body and under his skin. He attempts suicide. Several times. His bewilderment turns to rage, his rage turns to grief and his grief gives way to gradual acceptance. But his thirst for vengeance remains unsatiated.

Then one day, after 15 years of imprisonment, he is knocked out by gas emitted into his room and he awakens instead in a briefcase on the roof of a building. Oh-Dae-Su sees the sun and breathes in fresh air for the first time in 15 years.

The world has passed him by; his wife was murdered years ago and his daughter was subsequently adopted by foreigners and migrated to Europe. Thus begins Oh-Dae-Su’s odyssey of vengeance to uncover the identity of his captor and unravel the mystery behind his abduction.

Old Boy is a film that pushes the envelope, not in terms of violence (violence is not used excessively in the film but always in the most potent and effective manner when employed) but rather in terms of the themes the film explores; loss, vengeance, guilt, hatred, isolation, love and even incest.

Park Chan Wook has crafted a thought-provoking, unsettling and at times touching movie, one that actually transcends its source material.


Well there you go!....Next post, I'll be back with a review for Takeshi Miike's Ichi the Killer....one of the nastiest film I've seen...

1:02 AM


Wednesday, March 02, 2011 -

As part of my “promised” regular updates for this dusty, busted-ass old blog, I continue my look at Johnnie To’s seminal triad films: Election 1 and 2 with my short review for Election 2….

At a taut 1.5 hours, Election 2 is the one gang film that I can watch over and over again…..easily my favorite Hong Kong film of the past decade… since noboy requested for it, here ya go:


Election 2

Election 2 takes place at the end of Lok’s tenure as Chairman of the Wo Sing Triad, two years after the events of the first movie. The sequel is worthy companion piece to the first film, maintaining the same atmosphere and grittiness while considerably upping the violence quotient.

In the sequel, Lok (Simon Yam) desperately seeks to hold on to his reins of power as Chairman of Wo Sing, as a newer and younger challenger, Jimmy Li (Louis Koo) steps up as his main rival for the top spot.

Louis Koo, while not the most versatile actor around, turns in what I consider to be his finest and most subtle performance as Jimmy, under the direction of Johnnie To. His take on the character brings to mind, Al Pacino’s nuanced portrayal of Michael Corleone from the Godfather trilogy, a cool and calculating criminal with an aura of incredible violence that bubbles beneath his surface.

This “aura of incredible violence” rears its head in a grisly scene that involves hungry Alsatians, meat cleavers and grounded human meat. It’s a scene that brings to mind Herman Yau’s Untold Story (1993), with Anthony Wong’s award winning turn as the infamous Pork Bun killer.

The film work on two levels, one as a solid triad film and two, as the director’s own biting commentary on the current geo-political ties between Hong Kong and China, post-handover:

By the end of the movie, Jimmy emerges as the new chairman, only to realize that the curtailment of his business expansion plans into the China market in the beginning was all part of a ploy on the part the mainland police to manipulate him into running for chairmanship of the Wo Sing triad. They want him to remain as chairman past his 2 year tenure and for the reins of power to remain in the Li family, passed on from one generation to another, thus abolishing the centuries old Wo Shing Electoral process.

In essence, the Mainland Police’s answer to controlling crime in HK is to place their ideal candidate as the Chairman of Wo Shing, the oldest and most powerful triad in Hong Kong, thus effectively placing the whole organization under their thumb. This is essentially an accurate mirror of the socio-political relations between the China Government and the Hong Kong Triads during the 1997 British Handover, when China attempted to impose its iron-will upon the triads with minimal bloodshed. The full title of the film, “Election 2: Harmony is a virtue”, is an apt one; if you can’t beat them, recruit them!

In the end, Johnnie To’s Election 2 succeeds in being a satisfying sequel; an organic continuation of the first film, one that builds upon and broadens the existing themes and plot-points of its predecessor.

1:24 AM