Star-crossed lovers in a gorgeous high tragedy, a straight-laced cop who becomes a brilliant crook, and ghostly twists-'n'-turns practically guaranteed to fake you out—this year’s New York Korean Film Festival provides a host of international and North American premieres of movies with imagination to burn.

Yet despite so many undeniable high points, a genre fan might be forgiven for wondering whether to some degree the air has gone out of Korean filmmaking over the past year or so, at least judging by NYKFF’s line-up.  To be fair, despite being this continent’s grandest showcase of Korean films, or perhaps because of it, its program does not cater much to the “fantastic film” crowd, but rather casts a far wider net.  (This could be a new direction:  in 2007 the programming featured an entire horror track that I thoroughly enjoyed.)  So it should be no surprise that the festival is screening award-winning family dramas such as WITH A GIRL OF BLACK SOIL and MY FATHER along with the more rough-and-tumble fare that I’ve been fortunate enough to preview.  Yes, in its eighth edition NYKFF offers some high art along with superior popcorn flicks, but as far as I can see there’s no new, audacious, grab-you-by-the-collar talent on display along the lines of a Bong Joon-ho or a Kang Woo-Suk, let alone a Myung-se Lee or Park Chan-Wook.

Yet for that very reason NYKFF may be the perfect venue to introduce a friend to the manifold pleasures of Korean cinema:  you don’t have to be a cineaste or worship at the altar of the over-the-top to enjoy these films.  In fact, most of these titles should appeal to straight-up movie-lovers, whether Asiaphiles or not.  So in a summer that gave American audiences the lukewarm “chills” and rusted-over thrills of Hellboy 2: The Golden Box Office and The X Files:  I Want to Leave, it’s nice to have some entertainment options that supply authenticity and deeply-felt material, not just name-brands and production values.

All right, enough tee-up.  Let’s take a closer look at what’s on tap….

GOING BY THE BOOK should begin with an opening title that says, “Welcome to the best high-concept comedy of the year”—that’s how fun it is.  Although apparently it’s a remake of a 1991 Japanese film, GOING BY THE BOOK feels fresh and loose at every turn.  Holding no grudge against the corrupt system that had him demoted to traffic cop, Jung Do-man continues to toe the line of integrity and high professional standards.  But then he gets randomly chosen to “play” a bank robber in a training simulation and that same dedication and impeccability work stunningly against his superiors in a very public way.  Lightweight on the surface, but sporting themes that run deep, GOING BY THE BOOK breathes new life into the interesting but somewhat tired hostage-drama subgenre (cf. THE INSIDE MAN [2006] and THE KILL POINT [2007]).  Yet despite the newness it exudes, GOING BY THE BOOK also represents an old-style social farce that skewers hypocritical politics and mores with equal vigor:  one can easily imagine Alec Guinness in his prime taking on the role that Jung Jae-young flawlessly inhabits here; in fact, he’s ultimately the source of both all the comedy and all the seriousness in the film, not an easy trick to pull off.

Not only is the social commentary lacerating (in an amiable way, of course), but the filmmakers also consistently challenge the audience.  Their goal seems to be to probe our expectations, emotionally and morally, when we’re handed particular genre tropes—the SWAT teams, the stand-offs, the execution of “innocent” hostages, the risible reasons for taking them in the first place.  Having been down this path countless times, we’re set to react in an almost Pavlovian way to these particular stimuli yet this is precisely where the artifice of the training exercise inserts itself.  No doubt that in staging these elements director Ra Hee-chan is reliably inventive if low-key—but what’s hard to account for is the sense of affective dislocation he creates.  For example, when Jung Do-man must “kill” the hostages, he does so by hanging little signs around their necks that identifies them as dead.  But why, in the instant that these “fake” deaths occur, do we react to them in the same way as “real” ones?  It’s a weird sensation all right, but not an unpleasant one—it’s kind of like rolling down a hill to make oneself dizzy.  And there are unexpected moments of seriousness that also work.  When our protagonist explains why attempts to use his mother to coax him out of the bank failed, he reaffirms some things about what we, despite the movie’s pervasive cynicism, still hope informs what it means to be cop; as a result, the script actually creates a clearing for irony-free idealism both to surface and to resonate.

But lest you think that GOING BY THE BOOK is merely a clever meta-analysis of cop thrillers, please know that for much of the film I just couldn’t stop laughing.  Sure, it’s silly at times, but that’s part of its charm, especially as it never strays fully into annoying goofiness.  In fact, GOING BY THE BOOK is one of the few action-comedies where, when it was finished, I thought, “I’d love to see a sequel to this.”  That may never happen.  Still, it’s the kind of movie you want to see again with someone who hasn’t, just so you can enjoy their first-time reactions.

Among EPITAPH’s many virtues, one that may not be readily apparent is that it must represent one of the more creative ways to construct a horror anthology that’s ever been tackled.  Instead of relying on chapter-like divisions with an explicit connecting device, the screenplay by co-directors Jung Sik and Jung Bum-sik uses the non-linear approach so prevalent in Asian horror of the last decade to weave one story strand seamlessly into the next.  That’s not as hard as it may sound, since there’s a common setting—a World War II-era hospital whose staff must buckle under the thumb of the occupying Japanese—that facilitates the characters' moving in and out of each other’s lives PULP FICTION-style.

But far from being a simple narrative gimmick, the filmmakers exploit the inherent possibilities here to create a subtle, yet overpowering, sense of a continuous mind-space or dream-space that’s “authoring” the movie; this, in turn, is clearly situated in the memory of an elderly man in the present day.  I’m being purposely vague, in case you couldn’t tell, because I don’t want to spoil the experience too much for those who haven’t seen EPITAPH.  Suffice it to say, it’s the unreliable, at times even evaporating, narrative perspective that holds together the disparate flavors of horror accenting this melancholy film, from paranormal happenings to a serial killer sub-plot to outright body/medical horror.  And of course it should be noted that the two directors do an admirable job of keeping the tone even and the atmosphere free of false notes throughout.

In the end, EPITAPH’s visual and editing styles work hand-in-hand to fashion a work that’s both vivid and moodily abstract at the same time.  And the way that it combines poetic passages with matter-of-factly-delivered bloody shocks is reminiscent of such films as SPIDER FOREST (2004) and the symphonically creepy A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2004).  If you’ve been paying attention to Korean horror for the past decade (or even genre über-hybrids such as SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! [2003]), I suspect that you’re as hard to fool as I am when it comes to twisting the plot in a major way, but EPITAPH doesn’t disappoint in this regard either.  So while it’s hardly flawless—I could do without the shrieking violins à la Bernard Herrmann—EPITAPH ranks among the most lyrical and satisfying horror outings you’re apt to encounter from any country this year.

Ambitious in very different ways, ONCE UPON A TIME (aka Once Upon A Time in Corea [sic]) strikes out in nearly every department that EPITAPH hits a home run—pacing, structure, tension, dramatic intensity, and, well, conviction.  And the comparison is not altogether random:  like EPITAPH, ONCE UPON A TIME centers on the Japanese Occupation, but plays the colonial past more for laughs… or at least drama of the mustache-twirling variety.  There is much made about which characters are Japanese, which are Korean, and who is “passing,” but none of this really impacts what could have been a nifty espionage storyline set in the waning days of Japanese power in the summer of ‘45.  Similarly, the movie fails to deliver strongly in any of the other generic departments it flirts with:  caper flick, wartime drama, action movie, light romance, slapstick comedy, or historical epic.  For this general failure to cohere I have to call out the producers and development team at IM Pictures as much as director Jeong Yong-ki.

On the other hand, if you’re the type to find any pleasure in ONCE UPON A TIME, it’s probably because of this same mélange of elements.  So if you’re partial to big, splashy, overstuffed movies, this one is for you.  To give just one example:  where other movies might be content with two thieves bumping into each other as they try to steal a 3000-carat diamond, here we have three.  We’re also treated to full-blown nightclub numbers twice in the main body of the picture—and while the songs are certainly not bad, you get the feeling that the movie has been put on pause for a music video.

In short, this was the weakest of the films that NYKFF is screening—by far.  From the mind-numbing opening scene of exposition, to the lackluster martial arts “action” sequences, to the third production number, vapid and anachronistic, that unspools during the end titles, ONCE UPON A TIME rarely fails to disappoint.  I’m not opposed to nationalistic period pieces in principle—they can often provide a good time at the movies—but here “patriotism” becomes one more shallowly employed device.  The clichéd use of slow-mo as part of the trite, lazy handling of the massacre-of-innocents material actually does little to honor the past.  Instead, such an approach reduces the historical antecedents to so much fodder for mindless, cue-the-orchestra “spectacle.”  In short, the movie makes gestures towards pathos but delivers only bathos.  And the drawn-out scenes of comic relief, which involve two bumbling members of the underground, effectively drive a stake through its heart.  (Although, to be fair, there is one striking set piece that involves these guys at the end of the movie.)

Billed as the Korean answer to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, this film must be approached cautiously by viewers who would do well to recall that this was also the year that saw the release of CRYSTAL SKULL….

If there’s a festival centerpiece it’s probably HWANG JIN-YI—in addition to a regular screening, it’s being shown at a special event with the director and star—and with good reason.  Like ONCE UPON A TIME, this is a movie-move and a period piece, but that’s where the similarity ends.  Here the setting is the sixteenth century, but the real difference is that all the elements are in near-perfect harmony:  we get a couple of terrific action sequences, intelligent political intrigue, a social message that’s not overplayed, and at the heart of it all, an unforgettable romance.  The latter, it almost goes without saying, is of the silent-suffering variety in which feelings are not quite expressed, at least not when they should be, much less acted upon.  And while action is in considerably less abundant here, for me HWANG JIN-YI still recalls the epic, take-no-prisoners fatalism of MUSA THE WARRIOR (2001).  (A title which, I subsequently learned, is playing as part of NYKFF’s Ahn Sung-ki mini-retrospective—if you’ve never seen this rousing masterwork, check it out:  it’s long been available on Region 1 DVD.)

Much of the film’s success derives from the performance of the leads, Song Hye-kyo (in the title role) and, opposite her, the formidable Yoo Ji-tae.  It’s rare that two actors who share the screen are both so attractive and so intense without the film itself simply serving as a vehicle for their star power.  Yet genre director Chang Youn-hyun of TELL ME SOMETHING (1999) fame manages to use their presence to anchor his story, not overpower it.  That story, by the way, is a retelling of a legend that’s been filmed many times—the life of a kisaeng (a courtesan/entertainer) whose noble spirit and sensitive soul made her fate in life seem tragically unjust.  Of course this is a set-up to touch upon all kinds of issues related to class and the commodification of sexuality… topics that always seem so unintentionally ironic when explored via feature films that showcase the dazzlingly glamorous (cf. CAMILLE [1936] and GIGI [1958]), but there you go.

Be warned, though:  as one might expect, HWANG JIN-YI’s emotions are purposely outsized—when viewed through the lens of realism, or even just naturalism, the characters make choices that are real head-scratchers, but they do work within the generic context.  Period melodramas may be looked down upon in some quarters, but HWANG JIN-YI is the kind of movie for which the genre was created; it’s a grownup fairy tale in which life’s self-defeating moments are scaled up to achieve catharsis.  To its credit, it never becomes shrill, and in fact consistently balances its seismic passions with disarmingly quiet moments of self-reflection.  It’s hardly the feel-good movie of the year—which could be why it under-performed in Korea—but as pure theater, it’s stunning on almost every level imaginable.  The shocking bluntness of its conclusion hits the gut hard and the heart even harder.

(An aside:  male lead Yoo Ji-tae, forever linked to his role in the already-classic OLD BOY [2003] is these days also known for being an accomplished director in his own right; his short film OUT OF MY INTENTION is screening on August 22 and he'll be available for an audience Q&A afterward.)

Also tragic, but more sentimental than operatic, is OPEN CITY.  And you’d never suspect that from its first act:  OPEN CITY bolts out of the gate as high-gloss genre entertainment of the first order—uptempo, viscerally violent, hard-boiled, and stylish.  However, as the main pieces fall into place, connecting an international gang of ruthless pickpockets to the lone wolf detective on their heels, the drama becomes smaller and more intimate in scale.  For me, both halves of the movie are quite well done but the modulation between the two threw me off:  since I got a thesis and antithesis, I expected the climax to be a rousing synthesis, with personal redemption played out on a large, noirish stage.  Instead, the script goes for facile tearjerking concerning the cop’s mother, then apparently feels like it needs to go easy on the audience:  just when I was expecting a coup de grace, the movie does a predictable fade.  To be sure, OPEN CITY is populated by thrilling scenes and intriguing characters, but for me it didn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts.

Others may heartily disagree, viewing the film as an honest, maybe even savvy, deconstruction of the tough-guy cop archetype.  After all, such a strategy is hardly new to Korean genre films—crooks, bullies, bosses, and teachers who impose their will on others often are revealed as acting out childhood’s unfinished business, usually of the sadly mundane type.  This brand of psychological backstory is less common in American genre films, and often when it’s attempted, the screenwriters botch the emotional authenticity—as if their own childhoods were too pleasant for them to be able to write from experience.  But in Korea this motif shows up with such regularity in everything from slasher flicks (BLOODY REUNION [2006]) to similarly-named thrillers (A BLOODY ARIA [2006]), devotees may be either bored to tears by OPEN CITY’s family drama or just accepting of it as par for the course.  Either way, they are not likely to feel that it breaks new ground.  On the other hand, audiences without this viewing background may see OPEN CITY as a brutally honest—and therefore refreshing—treatment of the “flawed hero” character-type.  To me, being exposed to the childhood events that mold your protagonist is a good underpinning for memorable drama, but not a replacement for it.

On the bright side, the impressive job done by the cast is worth mentioning.  As the femme fatale, Son Ye-jin turns in a performance that is deceptive in its range and nuance.  Likewise, Kim Myung-min is explosive when the script demands it, and convincingly in turmoil when that’s required.  And as his police lieutenant boss, we get a nice character turn by the versatile Son Byung-ho, who also plays the exasperated-with-his-underling police chief in GOING BY THE BOOK.

In keeping with the problematic but seemingly unavoidable relationship with Japan that seems to permeate the festival, SPARE posits a bilingual thug-world where much is lost in translation, but in which common cultural ground can always be rediscovered courtesy of the universal language of flying fists and feet.  Director Lee Seong-han aims for a Guy Ritchie-esque lightness in this martial arts-heavy crime thriller, but without Ritchie’s mordant sense of humor or gift for narrative complexity.  No, the reason to buy a ticket to SPARE is pretty obvious:  the fight scenes are choreographed with a lack of pretension that renders them both minimalist and realistic.  But for this same reason they never really soar—“sore” is more like it.  You almost want to wince imagining the bruises on these guys after twirling around on concrete for several takes.  Such scenes are quite exciting as you watch them, but there’s no memorable set piece or dynamic shot that sticks with you.  In a way, that’s true of the entire film.  Well-meaning and affable, SPARE trots along with its well-meaning and affable characters until it wraps everything up with a pretty bow at the end.  There are a lot of cute ideas on hand, but the end result is a kind of PG-13 actioner.  Make of that what you will.



In addition to these feature-length works and many more besides, NYKFF is screening an extensive program of shorts—including a competition strand—as well as an intriguing doc called CINEMA KOREA.  If I can catch up with some of these, I’ll be sure to report back.  In the meantime, please visit The Korea Society, an invaluable source of information on Korean film and pop culture all year round.