Tag: 2010s

Traffickers (공모자들, Kim Hong-sun, 2012)

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The one with money and power wins. The ones without it lose everything they’ve got. In many ways, it’s the overriding message of contemporary Korean cinema, but the words take on an even darker hue when uttered by the villain of Kim Hong-sun’s illegal organ transplant drama, Traffickers (공모자들, Gongmojadeul). The film’s Korean title, Conspirators, hints at the ways that this world reduces everyone to one degree or another to something less than human as they chase often small dreams of health, comfort, and happiness, in which the central conspiracy comes to stand in for a world ruled by power and money.

Young-gyu (Im Chang-jung) used to be an organ trafficker, but gave up that side of his business when his best friend was killed by a victim who woke up unexpectedly and tried to escape. Since then, he’s smuggled moderately less inhuman things and has developed a crush on a young woman who works on the ticket counter at the port. Yu-ri (Jo Yoon-hee) has a sick father who needs a transplant, but the one was lined up for is cancelled at the last minute apparently because she neglected to inform them of an issue which gave them an excuse to pull out in what seems to be a suggestion that the list is being manipulated. Fearing her only option is the black market, Yu-ri is in desperate need of money and turn to one of Young-gyu’s acquaintances, the leader of a Chinese gang. To get her the money Young-gyu decides to pull one last job, but soon finds himself in over his head as his new target turns out to have a connection to his past.

The film never really goes into Yu-ri’s decision get her father a black market transplant but rather focuses on her desperation as someone who has been frozen out of the legitimate system which itself already prioritises those with means to fight for better or more efficient treatment. It’s not clear if she is aware that the organ may come from someone who has been killed deliberately for that purpose, or if she knew but decided her father’s life was more important than theirs. Nor is it clear if she’s thought through the repercussions of indebting herself to gangsters for some of whom organ harvesting is just another means of debt collection. In any case, all she really cares about is saving her father and it seems she is willing to do whatever that takes. 

To that extent, what they prey on is desperation. The gangsters don’t expect their victims to ask too many questions, because this is all illegal anyway and they’re already at their last resort to save a loved one’s life. That said, it seems strange that they would choose Chae-hee (Jung Ji-yoon), a young woman who uses a wheelchair and thinks she’s just going to China on holiday, who is travelling with her husband, to be their next victim given that there is obviously someone who is going to be looking for her. They generally assume most of their other victims won’t be missed and write them off as those of little consequence swallowed by a dog-eat-dog world. It seems that part of the gangster’s motivation is that they don’t want to become victims themselves so have chosen the path of violence and inhumanity. 

But despite his occupation, Young-gyu is conflicted about the bloodiness of his work and on realising that he has a connection to Chae-hee begins to want to save her while equally wanting to save Yu-ri and her father. The traffickers have, however, sold them all false promise in that it’s mainly the people who were trying to buy transplants that end up becoming victims and it’s not actually clear who is getting any of these organs until a final suggestion that they’re actually going to rich people in Korea who wanted to jump the transplant queue, meaning people like Yu-ri and and her father lose out twice over. Organ trafficking works hand in hand with life insurance scams looking to make money off human misery while rich elderly men buy the blood and organs of young ones in a kind of human sacrifice they think will return their youth and and vitality in an one the nose metaphor for how the older generation oppresses the young. In this bleak and nihilistic world, the film suggests that its villain was right. The ones with money and power win, while those without are quite literally consumed and exploited by a corrupt and inhuman system. 

Trailer (English subtitles

Invisible 2: Chasing The Ghost Sound (귀신소리 찾기, Yoo Jun-suk, 2011)

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After hearing ghostly voices in her guest house, a middle-aged woman calls in a famous paranormal investigator but is put out when he arrives with a film crew in tow in Yoo Jun-suk’s eerie fake documentary footage horror movie, Invisible 2: Chasing The Ghost Sound (귀신소리 찾기, Gwisin Soli Chajgi). As might be assumed, nothing is quite as it seems, but as the relations between Geum-ja (Jeong Eui-soon), ghost hunter Pil-woo, and the few crew begin to  decline, the ghost may be the least of their worries.

Geum-ja’s guest house is a traditional-style villa out in the country and at this time of year all but cut off by snow which is why it proves so hard for the team to reach. However, if the place is haunted, it’s by someone much more recently deceased than the Joseon-era past. Geum-ja suspects it may be her late sister and that she may have a message for her. That’s apparently why she contacted Pil-woo, hoping he would be able to record the ghostly voices and tell her what they say. 

Pil-woo, however, is suspicious of Geum-ja and suspects she may have been somehow involved with her sister’s death. Unable to find any sings of the paranormal activity, he thinks the ghost is probably a manifestation of Geum-ja’s guilt. He’s not particularly bothered about the potential crime, but is quite irritated that she’s wasted his time. She had indeed been reluctant to key him in on the facts of the case and may also have misled him. It seems Geum-ja’s sister Geum-seon may have been having an affair with Geum-ja’s husband, who has apparently not returned to haunt Geum-ja, or at least not in this form. 

But just as the crew are leaving, Geum-ja begins screaming and claims she can hear a voice that no one else can. Pil-woo too picks up five fragments of a ghostly voice from around the villa but struggles to assemble them into a coherent whole. This sudden reversal, however, only raises suspicion with the director of the TV crew who find Pil-woo’s discovery a little too convenient. He suggests that Pil-woo and Geum-ja may be in it together to cook up a ghost show. Pil-woo sees himself a genuine investigator and seems unhappy about working with the TV crew in the first place. He thinks of them as charlatans who regularly stage paranormal investigations to make the show entertaining. 

Geum-ja didn’t want to be on TV, either, though perhaps as Pil-woo suspects that she doesn’t really want to draw attention to herself or risk other things she might not want exposed coming to light. Pil-woo had suggested it was all a manifestation of her guilt, but never stopped to consider that both things could be true. Geum-ja and Geum-seon were twins, which means she is essentially haunted and confronting herself as expressed through the lengthy mirror shot in which Geum-ja converses with Geum-seon though her own reflection. Geum-seon plays a kind of game with her as if they were children, turning the sounds into a puzzle that must be solved in order to unlock the truth of her message. 

Yoo finally returns to make ionic usage of the eerie shot through a glass coffee table that opened the film as the malevolent presence eventually makes itself known.The villa becomes a more literal kind of haunted space, but as Pil-woo discovers its melancholy secret may be of a more ordinary kind, Geum-ja seeks a kind of reverse retribution, comforting the ghost of her sister but also asking for an apology as if she had the upper hand in this situation while wandering around in the team’s “stupid helmet” trying to root Geum-seon out. The dread only deepens as she comes closer to solving the puzzle and receiving its chilling message. Then again, perhaps the message is that Geum-ja should have just ignored the nagging voices in her head rather than chasing after ghostly echoes or seeking absolution from spirits rather than reckon with a painful reality. Though Geum-ja may see herself as the victim, so too may Geum-seon as the pair chase each other through the eerie space of the darkened villa with seemingly no escape for either.

Ciao UFO (再見UFO, Patrick Leung Pak-Kin, 2019/2026)

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“Where will I go in this future?” a young man tearfully asks, unexpectedly cast adrift and handed a future he never expected to have with no one to help him navigate this new reality. Speaking from the perspective of the Handover, his confusion hints at a sense of despair falling over Hong Kong, but also echoes through the contemporary society in a place where, as he later says, nothing stays the same, though that might not necessarily be such a bad thing.

Long delayed for a wider release, Patrick Leung Pak-Kin’s Obayashi-esque drama has a potent sense of nostalgia for a lost Hong Kong of the 80s and 90s, but also a hope that, even if the past cannot be reclaimed and we cannot become who we once were, it is never too late to start again or to choose a new path that leads back to who we were really supposed to be. As children, Heem, Kin, Hoyi, and her unnamed little brother were firm friends living on the Wah Fu estate. The fact that they are no longer in touch reflects a sense of displacement amid the rapid economic growth of that later 20th century in which these kinds of apartment complexes fell out of use leaving communities scattered as the housing market escalated to the extremes of today thanks to rampant property speculation. 

The children see the UFO at moment of extreme emotional despair and it gives them only a temporary respite from the terrors of a more adult world. In the mid-1990s, they have all lost their way. Kin (Chui Tien-you) once said he wanted to be an explorer like his father, but is now working several low-paying jobs such as manning a paper stand, selling vacuum cleaners, and acting as an agent of encroaching modernity by setting up home computers for first-time users. He no longer believes in aliens or the UFO, and though he reconnects with an equally melancholy former schoolmate, keeps her at arms’ length and lacks the courage to fight for what he really wants. Heem (Wong You-nam), whose childhood leukaemia has gone into remission, is working as an extra without much of a plan for the rest of his life, because he never expected to have one. He still believes in the UFO and tries to reconnect with his childhood friends amid the X-Files inspired alien obsessions of the ‘90s.

Hoyi (Charlene Choi), meanwhile, who wanted to be a joker making people laugh has been pushed onto a more conventional path as a professional accountant that appears to be making her unhappy, though she’s unable to escape it. While Kin falls victim to stock market mania and Heem Tamagotchi profiteering before joining his brother’s burgeoning real estate business, Hoyi’s straight and steady path would seem to be the winner, though perhaps there’s not so much need for accountants when everyone’s going bankrupt in the Asian financial crisis just as no has the money to buy apartments, which is something Heem’s brother didn’t seem to consider in thinking himself superior to those who got hooked on the stock market.

Several times the three’s path cross, though they do not meet each other and remain locked on their own melancholy paths. Hoyi’s free spirited “hippie” uncle teaches her a classical song written by an ancient poet that he says is about learning to find beauty in loneliness, perhaps sensing her sense of isolation as she wilfully suppresses herself to be the person that she thinks she’s supposed to be including a potential marriage to a man who’s the polar opposite of her authentic self. Austin (Joey Leung) pulls her back to earth when she’s lost in space, which is another way of saying that he crushes her dreams and desire for happiness by telling her to forget about UFOs and concentrate on being a wife and mother after their wedding.

The UFO then comes to represent a kind of nostalgia and the longing for a lost a past, but within that also finds a sense of hope that what once was can be again. It might not be the same, but it’s still there and it’s not too late to turn around and rediscover that sense of wonder in life. The childhood friends eventually reunite and find new solidarity in their shared experience that makes this new reality a little more bearable, even amid its painfulness and irony. The film ends with Hoyi’s brother (Ng Siu-hin) wearing a mask and telling us that it is April 1, 2003, which is the day that Leslie Cheung died, along with perhaps a certain vision of another Hong Kong, but also hints at the SARS crisis that would strike that year along with the more recent pandemic. Perhaps everything is a cycle, but as they say, the end of one thing is the start of another. They haven’t seen any UFOs for a long time and perhaps won’t ever see one again, but the hope remains, and with it the courage to live in this new future whatever it may hold.

Ciao UFO is in UK cinemas from 15th May courtesy of Central City Media.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Garden Apartment (ガーデンアパート, Umi Ishihara, 2018)

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Can one escape from the loneliness of being alive, or is melancholy longing an unavoidable companion of existence? Two very different women attempt to answer this question, perhaps unknowingly, in the debut feature from Umi Ishihara, The Garden Apartment (ガーデンアパート). Love becomes a destructive force which binds them both in different ways in its elusive yet unattainable allure, yet if escape exists perhaps it lies in acceptance of emotion’s transience rather in the permanence of a single moment of connection. 

Our heroine, Hikari, is a young woman at a crossroads. She’s been living with her boyfriend Taro for some time and has recently discovered that she is expecting their child. However, the couple are also struggling in a still stagnant economy. Taro is currently unemployed and, from Hikari’s point of view at least, not trying hard enough to find a stable job of the kind he will need to become a responsible father. Taro, however, does not seem worried because he’s long become used to relying on the financial assistance of his eccentric aunt, Kyoko. Kyoko married a wealthy man who sadly passed away at a young age, leaving her rich but sad and with no children of her own. Ashamed of himself and embarrassed by his aunt’s lifestyle, he’d not planned on introducing her to the mother of his unborn child but ends up doing so when she unexpectedly accosts them in a coffee shop. Things take a turn for the strange when Kyoko decides to invite Hikari to her home where she hosts “parties” for young women who want to have fun together in a safe space. 

Kyoko’s entire existence is founded on the idea of retreat, a way of living in an imagined past where she is in no pain. Her hedonistic household is filled with youngsters in a similar position all looking simultaneously for escape and for a place to belong. Kyoko drinks, so she says, not to forget but to remember, as a means of slowing down time. She wants to live inside love in memory of her late husband whose loss she cannot overcome and whose presence she feels to be slipping away from her. Sure that no one would ever love her, she clings to the last vestiges of a long absent love rather than submit herself to the loneliness of her later life. 

Nevertheless, the kind of parties Kyoko throws are the kind which only make you remember just how lonely you really are. Hikari, fed up with Taro’s vacillations, arrives at Kyoko’s only to abscond with her only male guest, Sekai, for an unfulfilling late night adventure. Hikari was seeking escape through love, but discovered that love was a finite thing which must eventually run its course. Nevertheless, she appears to have taken little pleasure in it and has come to the conclusion that desire only breeds pain. Love didn’t save her, it only brought her fear and a desire for solitude.  

Meanwhile, Taro tries to retrieve his love from Kyoko’s world only to discover she has chosen her own path, drifted away from him and the life he assumed they were building together. He attacks Kyoko for her lovelorn eccentricity, her jealously, and her need for affection in her treatment of him as a surrogate son (a role now seemingly ambiguously played by Sekai who seems to be just as conflicted as the increasingly petulant Taro) but has little real intention of assuming his responsibilities as an expectant father. 

Kyoko seeks escape through growing herself in nostalgia and the false friendships of disenfranchised youth while Hikari becomes intent on moving forward in an acknowledgment of life’s despair rather than intent on fighting it. Love may be a temporary illusion trailing a wake of self-destruction but there’s something to be said for knowing when it’s time to wake up. Ishihara frames her tale in the mundanity of an ordinary struggling existence alternating with the melancholy neons of Kyoko’s world of night peopled by fugitives like herself looking for an escape from life’s suffering but finding themselves imprisoned all the same. There may be no salve for sadness, but a life must run its course and, in the end, we are all alone.

List (리스트, Hong Sang-soo, 2011)

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Hong Sang-soo finds himself in a positive, if characteristically melancholy, mood for his hard to see 2011 short, List (리스트). Short as a companion piece to In Another Country, the film opens with the exact same scene as a mother and daughter bicker about the sorry circumstances which have forced them to retreat to the seaside where they’ll be living in peaceful seclusion. This time however, young(ish) Mihye (Jung Yu-mi) sits down to write not a screenplay but a list, a kind of itinerary in order to make the most of this deliberately boring “vacation” taken all alone with her nice but “concerned” mother (Youn Yuh-jung).

Mihye’s List runs right through the day and includes normal holiday activities like having a meal in a famous restaurant, checking out the mudflats, and buying souvenirs, as well as reminders to giver her mum a massage and let her know she’s loved, and a few idiosyncratic suggestions too. Perhaps what she’s really the most excited about is trying out her new tooth brushing technique! At night she plans to dream of “prince charming” which is also something her mother later brings up in pushing a little on why the near 30-year-old Mihye has no boyfriend and is not yet married. Mihye’s mother worries that she has no desires before dialling back and suggesting that Mihye has desires but not the courage to act on them. 

This will, perhaps, prove to be true when Mihye and her mother meet a nice man just sitting on the beach as if waiting for them. Unsurprisingly, the man turns out to be a film director but he’s a far cry from Hong’s general leads. Sanjun (Yu Jun-sang) is a nice, wounded young man who might be slightly awkward but in an affable way. Though Mihye’s mother is taken with him, Mihye isn’t so sure. He seems kind of like a prince charming, but then again he’s just a random man they met on a beach who turns out to be famous and successful. Claiming that her daughter is “shy”, Mihye’s mother agrees to Sanjun’s invitation to a date on Mihye’s behalf (which was bizarrely directed to her anyway) and then offers to come along despite Mihye’s double protests. 

Tellingly, Hong departs from his usual aesthetic with key scenes shot on obvious sets and a strange absence of energy even in those taking place on location. Mihye muses and her fantasies appear to come to life. She completes her list for the day almost by accident while in the company of the prince charming she requested. Still, she isn’t sure. She asks him why he likes her but his answers are vague and perhaps worrying. He likes her “purity” and thinks she’s cute. She’s “special” in a way no one can see. All things Mihye’s wants to hear but doesn’t quite believe. Later she tells Sanjun she’s frightened of what her life will become, that she’s trapped by her mother and feels, in some way, damaged by her though she fails to elaborate further. In true fairytale style the romance escalates improbably, culminating in lifelong declarations of love and a promise of mutual salvation. 

Mihye wonders why people can’t see the good right in front of them. Sanjun replies it’s because they’re too focused on indulging themselves in the now. Yet what Mihye learns is perhaps that occasional fantasies are OK, that vague lists are useful because they leave you open to possibilities while lessening the fear of disappointment, and that even if your mother thinks your plans are “too ambitious”, it doesn’t really matter, you can just see where they go. Mihye might not have cured any of those anxieties. Perhaps she still feels trapped, resentful, even hopeless, but the sun rises anew and there’s another day to explore. It’s as cheerful an ending as Hong can muster, hope mixed with melancholy resignation and a stoic determination to put a brave face on existential despair.

Pee Mak (พี่มาก..พระโขนง, Banjong Pisanthanakun, 2013)

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If you suddenly discover your spouse is a member of the undead, do you really have to break up with them or is it alright to go on living with a ghost? The conventional wisdom in Banjong Pisanthanakun’s horror comedy take on the classic folktale Mae Nak Phra Khanong, Pee Mak (พี่มาก..พระโขนง), is that the dead cannot live with the living, but perhaps love really is strong enough to overcome death itself and living without the person who means most to you really might be more frightening than living with an all-powerful supernatural entity.

In any case, much of the comedy revolves around the desperate attempts of Pee Mak’s friendship group to make him realise that wife, Nak (Davika Hoorne), is a ghost. The men had all been away at the war and have now returned but the village seems different and the villagers are all avoiding Pee Mak. Gradually, it dawns on them that Nak actually died due to complications from a miscarriage after going into labour alone at home given Pee Mak’s absence. But Pee Mak himself remains unaware of this fact, or so it seems, and refuses to listen to his friend’s attempts to convince him which are also frustrated by their fear of Nak and the worry that she might curse them if they reveal her secret.

The four friends are each played by the same actors and have the same character names as those in the shorts Banjong Pisanthanakun directed for 4Bia and Phobia 2, and as in those two films there is a degree of confusion about who is and isn’t a ghost. On their return, the men are passed by a ferryman who is returning the bodies of dead soldiers to their families explaining that the graveyards are all full. This of course hints at the destructive costs of the war and haunted quality of the depleted village to which not all men have returned, but also leaves the door open to wondering if the five of them are not already dead themselves and have returned home only in spirit without realising. Pee Mak, after all, sustains a serious injury from which he miraculously recovers driven only love and the intense desire to return home to his wife and the baby he’s never met who must by now have been born. 

Meanwhile, Nak tells Pee Mak that the rumours of her death are greatly exaggerated and mostly put about by a local man, Ping, who had been harassing her while Pee Mak was away at the war and was upset by her rejection. Ping then later also accuses Nak of killing his mother after she drunkenly told Pee Mak about Nak being a ghost, but in general the villagers only avoid Nak until one rather late intervention rather than try to exorcise her spirit. Nevertheless ghost or not, it does not actually appear that Nak is particularly dangerous. She does not drain Pee Mak’s life force nor randomly attack other people and at most only seems to glare intensely at his friends who might just be annoying in far more ordinary ways especially as one of them seems have developed a crush her.

Which is all to say, is it really so wrong for Pee Mak to enjoy a happy family life with his ghost wife who may have developed a set of really useful skills such as super-stretchy arms and the ability to hang upside down? Banjong Pisanthanakun constantly wrong-foots us, suggesting that perhaps everyone’s already dead, or maybe no one is, while eventually coming down on the side of the power of love to overcome death itself. Despite the film’s setting in the distant past, he throws in a constant stream of anachronistic pop culture references that might suggest this is all taking place in some kind of universal time bubble but also lends to the sense of absurdity in what is really a kind of existential farce as the gang attempt to figure out who’s alive and who’s a ghost before eventually realising that it might not really matter. Dead or alive, it seems like life is about just being silly with your friends free from the folly of war, which is surely a message many can firmly get behind.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Chef, The Actor, The Scoundrel (厨子戏子痞子, Guan Hu, 2013)

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“They were described as insane. But others said they were heroes,” according to the opening narration of Guan Hu’s zany wartime comedy, The Chef, The Actor, The Scoundrel (厨子戏子痞子, Chúzi Xìzi Pǐzi). Of course, the truth is that they seem to be both, a band of anonymous avengers desperately trying to end the cholera outbreak in Beijing in 1942 by stealing a vaccine from the Japanese and distributing it to the local population. 

They do this by kidnapping two Japanese soldiers who were involved with Unit 731 working on bioweapons. In a touch of irony, they may have intended to spread the disease intentionally to use to local Chinese population as test subjects, but the Japanese army in China is now so heavily affected they think it might just cost them the war. In any case, the plan goes awry because Ogasawara (Masanobu Otsuka) turns out not to be carrying the vaccine, but a sample of an even deadlier strain against which the existing version won’t work. Meanwhile, the restaurant where the gang are holed up is also surrounded by bandits who think the soldiers were carrying a different sort of treasure. 

In truth, the gang are scientifically trained special agents with a mission to retrieve the vaccine but having realised that the Japanese can’t be tortured into giving it up, are forced to put on a charade pretending to be a camp sushi chef, his mute wife, a Peking opera performer, and a cowboy. What looks like completely random, bumbling incompetence is actually a finally turned plan designed to get Ogasawara to give up the secret of the vaccine. When Ogasawara’s ogre-like assistant points out they’ve killed far too many people for their captors to let them go, Ogasawara insists they weren’t people, they were test subjects, before explaining that their captors’ biggest weakness is a lack of unity.

This is, of course, ironic, as even if the band are pretending to be at each other’s throats trying to take control of their prey, they are actually working together. Meanwhile, though it may, at times, seem as if Ogasawara is playing them at their own game, it turns out he doesn’t have a game plan either and isn’t really thinking that far ahead. The Japanese just want the code to create the vaccine, and only commit to rescuing Ogasawara when it turns out the recipe he gave them doesn’t work, meaning they need him to come back and work on the project. But the heroes are a little bit ahead of him, realising they might have access to what’s needed to create the vaccine for themselves and spread it throughout the city. 

The final title card dedicates the film to “the movies we loved when we were young,” and Guan certainly does make good use of silent film aesthetics, even in also falling into a more mainstream sensibility and employing may of the same mannerisms as similar blockbuster movies with split screens and fast zooms. The film’s zany humour plays out almost as a kind of reaction to the grim and absurd world all around it in which death lurks all around, along with Japanese Imperial forces and bandits, and nothing is quite as it first seems to be. The Japanese soldiers refer to the Chinese as “Shinajin,” a sort of derogatory term meaning “Chinaman,” while the trio refer to the Japanese as “kimonos” as if to signal their mutual animosity while the dialogue itself is full of silly puns and weird swearing. 

Which is quite something considering the darkness of the premise. Not only are we dealing the atrocities of Unit 731 which is not only responsible for the cholera outbreak, but potential apocalypse for China which is under threat from several angles including the Nationalists and bandits. The sickness they are really trying to cure is their subjugation as they take care to issue the vaccine to ordinary Chinese people without seeking fame or fortune. Nevertheless, the closing titles insist they were based on real people who studied at Yenching University Medical College before the war and then went on to lead quite ordinary lives after this brief moment of heroic insanity as they harness nonsense as a weapon to trick the enemy into betraying themselves before giving up the ghost.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese and English subtitles)

The Villagers (동네사람들, Im Jin-soon, 2018)

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Trying to make a fresh start after being fired as a boxing coach in Seoul for challenging match fixing practices, a rookie teacher finds himself embroiled in small-town conspiracy in Im Jin-soon’s Ma Dong-seok vehicle, The Villagers (동네사람들, Dongnesaramdeul, AKA Ordinary People). Unlike the big bad city, this rural backwater is mired in feudalism and corruption as if it were stuck in the authoritarian past in which everyone keeps their head down and minds their own business rather than challenging injustice or trying to improve the lives of those around them.

What Ki-chul (Ma Dong-seok) and high schooler Yu-jin (Kim Sae-ron) have in common is that they’re both outsiders. Yu-jin transferred to the high school from Seoul and has been branded a troublemaker by the judgmental teachers. But despite the school’s seeming authoritarianism, the pupils have little respect for the school system and openly flout the rules by smoking on school premises and being rude to the staff. It transpires that Ki-chul has basically been hired as a kind of muscle, charged with getting students who haven’t paid their fees or dinner money to cough up ahead of an upcoming audit of the school’s finances. Many of the students he approaches brush him off as if they simply don’t intent to pay, but the school doesn’t seem to be interested in finding out why they might not be able to or if there are problems at home. Yu-jin too rolls her eyes he asks her, but in her case she’s unwilling to finance an institution that’s not doing anything for her even if as Ki-chul advises her they won’t let her graduate if she doesn’t.

Ki-chul seems uncomfortable with his new role and tries to do what he can to help, but encounters resistance from the teachers who tell him there’s no point worrying about kids like these. If they skip school, they’re branded runaways and no attempt is made to look for them. The teaching staff lowkey threaten Ki-chul by reminding him his job’s to get the money and he doesn’t want to make trouble for himself when he was lucky to be employed here in the first place. And so he finds himself conflicted when he spots Yu-jin in town getting herself into dangerous situations trying to find out what’s happened to her friend Su-yeon (Shin Se-hwi) who’s been missing for days but the police won’t seem to do anything. Yu-jin tells him that adults can’t be trusted, especially not the police, but he thinks it’s teenage alienation before trying to report the case again himself through a friend on the force and having it rejected.

The fierce resistance to even mentioning Su-yeon ought to tip them off that’s something bigger’s going on, but everyone is focussed on the upcoming election in which the headmaster of the school is standing for governor that nothing’s getting done at all. Ki-chul tries to report another teacher for harmful behaviour towards students, but is yelled at for exposing the school’s business by going to the police “over some runaway”. He’s reminded to keep his head down and mind his own business, even while Yu-jin continues to be in danger and Su-yeon is still missing. An orphan whose parents had massive debts to loansharks, Su-yeon was forced to work in a bar to support herself and her grandmother. She dreamed of being beautiful and free as an adult, but was badly let down by many of those around her including the school who decided that girls like her weren’t worth helping.

Of course, Ki-chul can’t help standing up for justice through the medium of his fists and smashing his way to the truth while trying to keep Yu-jin safe. If someone disappeared Su-yeon, they won’t think twice about doing the same to Yu-jin, though she of course thinks she’s invincible and is too young to think sensibly about her own safety while desperate to find out what’s happened to her friend. They are both, however, trapped by the legacy of an authoritarian era in which the police works only for the powerful and dirty local politics taints everything around it as everyone desperately tries to ingratiate themselves with the new regime while avoiding stepping out of line and endangering themselves. Ki-chul, however, has not much interest in that and is determined to smack some sense into gangsters and law enforcement alike in an effort to show that the world doesn’t necessarily need to be this way if only more people were willing to stand up to cronyism and exploitation.

The Villagers is released Digitally in the US Oct. 7 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Bayside Shakedown 3: Set the Guys Loose (踊る大捜査線 THE MOVIE 3 ヤツらを解放せよ！, Katsuyuki Motohiro, 2010)

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It’s all change at Wangan police station in the third instalment in the Bayside Shakedown series, Let the Guys Loose (踊る大捜査線 THE MOVIE 3 ヤツらを解放せよ！Doru Daisousasen the Movie 3: Yatsura wo Kaihou seyo!). Seven years on from the previous film, many things have changed. Aoshima (Yuji Oda) is now in charge of his team and the precinct is set to move to new purpose-built premises boasting the latest high-tech security systems which will aid them in combating potential terrorism and safeguarding local dignitaries. Even so, the gang will have to deal with some unfinished business from the past before they can fully move on as the circular tale takes us right back to the original film’s villain. 

Following the familiar formula, Motohiro opens with a gag sequence in which Aoshima prepares to give a briefing only it’s not about a case it’s about the logistics of moving offices of which he is in charge and characteristically vowing to do the best job possible. Hindering his progress, however, are two bizarre crimes, the first a bank robbery investigated by his colleague/long-term love interest Sumire (Eri Fukatsu) in which no money is stolen, and a bus hijacking he investigates himself in which the hijackers simply left the scene again without stealing anything. Ironically enough a theft does take place during the move involving three pistols which happen to belong to Aoshima, Sumire, and a new recruit from China, Wang (Kenichi Takito). Soon enough a body turns up on a boat along with Aoshima’s gun sending the gang on the chase for the mysterious thieves. 

The thing we’re constantly told about the new building is how secure it’s going to be, which makes the theft even more ironic, but the truth is that in true franchise style pretty much anyone and everyone is walking in and out carrying moving boxes so nothing is ever really “secure” even in the police station, harking back to the minor villain in the first film who was able to sneak in because he was wearing a fake cosplay police uniform and no one noticed him. Inevitably, this invisible vulnerability eventually comes back to haunt them when the criminals are simply able to steal the manual for the security system and replace it with one of their own to render it unusable to the police later trapped inside the building. Meanwhile approaches to public safety become a matter for debate when it arises that the criminals’ demand is that all of the villains we’ve seen Aoshima arrest so far including psychopathic serial killer Manami (Kyoko Koizumi) who still has a sizeable following online should be released. Counter-intuitively, the police bigwigs are in favour of acquiescing with only Muroi (Toshiro Yanagiba), who has now been promoted to sit at the table himself, objecting on the grounds that it simply isn’t safe to release such dangerous criminals back into society. 

Rather than simply bureaucracy and funding concerns, Bayside Shakedown’s third instalment is more directly critical of the interplay between politics and justice as it becomes clear that the majority of police chiefs care more about public opinion than the law while also mindful of the upcoming general election. Meanwhile the same problem arises with the local police being sidelined by the elites from HQ, a smooth liaison officer Torikai (Shun Oguri) arriving to solve any disputes insisting that the locals be fully respected and allowed to turn their jobs only to turn dark and authoritarian after suffering a catastrophic injury on the job. Once again, Aoshima is forced to consider if his work has real value not only because of the way he’s treated by the cops from HQ but subjected to a healthcare crisis which leads him and many others to assume he’s not long to live. It’s later discovered that he’s been misdiagnosed during his annual checkup, but his boss unethically decides to keep that from him noticing he’s become depressed and lost his mojo, hoping that he’ll be easier to manager but quite the reverse turns out to be true. Again mimicking their previous heart-to-hearts throughout the series, Aoshima perks up after some encouraging words from Sumire in addition to some words of wisdom from the late Waku presented by his rookie nephew and decides to live as if there’s no tomorrow going flat out for justice while caring nothing for his safety. 

Even more than ten years on from the TV series and first big-screen outing, the romance between Aoshima and Sumire still hasn’t quite blossomed despite their respective brushes with death. Many things seem set to change for the Wangan police, the new building acting as a kind of reset while Muroi prepares to move into a more political role and a new, somewhat surprising, local police chief is selected to lead them into a new future just as dedicated to compassionate local policing defined by fairness and justice as they have ever been. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

Design of Death (杀生, Guan Hu, 2012)

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A doctor (Simon Yam Tat-wah) dispatched to put an end to a “mysterious disease” finds himself embroiled in mystery after discovering the barely breathing body of an unpopular villager in Guan Hu’s darkly comic drama, Design of Death (杀生, Shāshēng). Adapted from a 1998 novella by Chen Tiejun, the film’s Chinese title translates as “to kill a living thing”, the first act forbidden under Buddhism. Yet this particular village has decided it has no other choice if it is to maintain order along with its famed “longevity”.

The son of an itinerant pedlar reluctantly taken in by the village’s ruling Niu clan, Niu Jieshi (Huang Bo) is a general nuisance and agent of chaos. For the first part of the film, we see him act in ways which are rude and vulgar, cruel, violent, and morally repugnant. In short, we can well understand why pretty much everyone wanted him dead and any one of them might have killed him. Yet as the film goes on, we come to sympathise with Jieshi. We see him more as a loveable rogue who was never fully accepted by the village because he was not of it by birth. His foreignness is the reason to which the other villagers attribute to his inability to conform with their rules and traditions, and though, in retrospect, most of his pranks are just silly, his presence destabilises the sense of order which has enabled this place to earn the name Long Life Village. In any case, living past 120 might not be much fun when you’re constrained by so many rules and social mores while many are concerned more with the village’s reputation than the lives or happiness of the villagers.

But the village’s reputation does seem to be important to the powers that be, which is why the doctor is eventually sent there. They want him to find out the cause of this “mysterious disease” and stop it spreading so the Long Life Village doesn’t lose its USP. When he arrives, however, it seems like the “mysterious disease” is actually cancer, which obviously doesn’t spread from person to person. The only other symptom is a minor eye infection, though the real disease running through the village is enmity with the determination to put a stop to Jieshi’s chaotic antics. Jieshi proves oddly unkillable, resurrecting himself after his first encounter with the doctor having been thrown off a cliff in a sack. His defiance only spurs on the villager elders, who then bring back another doctor, Niu (Alec Su You-peng), who had been away studying Western medicine in the cities after being kicked out of the village for another infraction some years previously.

There’s something disconcertingly modern about Niu that makes his presence in the village somehow threatening, as if he were the harbinger of a more authoritarian era. Despite being a doctor, he is cold-hearted and rational and is determined not only to kill Jieshi but his unborn child. The unnamed doctor is, by contrast, a master of Chinese medicine though also educated in the Western style and suspicious of Niu. All he wants to is to understand why Jieshi died, which is also in its way to cure the sickness in the village to which Niu is an obstacle. What he gradually realises is that most of the other people in the village are pretty awful and what they succeeded in doing was creating the circumstances for Jieshi’s death by making the village uninhabitable for him. 

But it may also be true that there’s something cosmically dangerous about killing such an elemental spirit and that the village cannot in fact survive in the absence of chaos. Jieshi is then the individual hammered into submission by implacable authoritarianism while the village is a microcosm of a corrupt authoritarian society ruled over by a petty elite obsessed with rules and tradition. That the doctor dresses in modern style and uses a mix of traditional and modern equipment suggests, as does the pregnant finale, that in all things there must be balance. The ultramodernism of Niu with its fascist undertones won’t work, nor will the hardline traditionalism of the village. Had they only made more of an attempt to understand and accept Jieshi rather than forcing him into submission, they too might have survived and evolved but in fact were only ever headed towards destruction in their obsession with a long life lived in misery.