Tag: 2020s

Gezhi Town (得闲谨制, Kong Sheng, 2025)

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Fleeing the Japanese, a collection of former munitions factory workers and displaced soldiers take refuge in an abandoned village in Kong Sheng’s wartime action drama Gezhi Town (得闲谨制, dé xián jǐn zhì). Another in a series of films released to mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War alongside Dongji Rescue and Dead to Rights, the film is much more overtly propagandistic and an old-fashioned patriotism epic in which the hero’s quest to defend his home against the Japanese is quite obviously intended as a declaration that the modern China too will defend itself from incursion.

Indeed, Dexian (Xiao Zhan) says as much when risking his life to fire the artillery gun at a Japanese tank insisting that his resistance is not just for his own wife and child but for the future generations of the Chinese people. Getting in a few digs at Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT, the film finds the heroes on the run implicitly denied their homeland in being forced into constant retreat. “I don’t want to die, I just want to go home,” the soldiers are fond of exclaiming, though already traumatised by their experiences, they’re effectively hiding from the war while attempting to create a new homeland in Gezhi Town after deciding to settle there rather than carry on along the road.  

Captain Xiao (Peng Yuchang) might actually be the worst artillery officer in history and has a habit of making exactly the wrong decisions that put all his men in danger while fiercely defending an artillery gun he doesn’t really know how to use and has little intention of doing so anyway. A former munitions worker, Denxian was press-ganged into accompanying them to do maintenance on the guns, but Xiao has only been paying him in IOUs. Like everyone else, he just wants a home and is wary of being made “homeless” again if the Japanese turn up, so has been sharpening many of his tools and his wife’s domestic implements into makeshift weapons, much to her chagrin. Xia Cheng (Zhou Yiran) objects in part because she thinks it’s dangerous for their young son Dengxian who seems to have hearing loss as a direct result of his exposure to warfare when they were on the road.

But the problem is that when the Japanese actually arrive, the villagers are largely clueless. One challenges a Japanese soldier with a bakeshop bayonet but drops it and grins when the soldier lowers his weapon slightly. The soldier then bayonets him. Others run directly into the Japanese soldiers’s blades, while Xiao’s men randomly shoot all their bullets in one go then realise that they have no idea what to do now they’re essentially unarmed even though there are only three Japanese men in the village at this point. Only Denxian, the plucky civilian, knows what to do though even he originally gives the sensible advice to hide and wait for the Japanese soldiers to go away because they won’t have time to do an intensive search of every house.

Then again, the Japanese are quite stupid too and arrogant rather than cruel as they were in Dead to Rights even if constant references are made to Nanjing. Despite the grittiness of its storyline, the film is essentially a comedy filled with goofy humour along with Denxian’s winning hero antics as he resolves to do whatever he can to save his wife and son even if it costs his own life. When the Japanese first arrive, a kind of defeatism sweeps across the village that is only eventually broken by Denxian’s realisation that they don’t have to give in to their fate but might as well go out fighting. The film paints him as a kind of folk hero, echoed in the closing song recounting his exploits while the final title card says that he went on to use his skills in the resistance against American imperialism and the assistance of Korea. Xia Cheng fares a little less well. Despite singing a song about the new women, her role is limited to motherhood while Denxian’s love of his family is a metaphor for love of the nation as he desperately tries to reclaim a home in the wake of constant incursions. Nevertheless, the use of silent-film style intertitles and flashback scenes shot in the style of pathé news sequences add a degree of poignancy to this boy’s own adventure story.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Murderer Report (살인자 리포트, Cho Young-jun, 2025)

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“Call it a psychodrama,” the psychiatrist/serial killer at the centre of Cho Young-jun’s psychological thriller Murderer Report (살인자 리포트, Salinja Report) suggests in a meta moment, and the film is, in some ways, a battle of wits between down on her luck journalist Sun-ju (Cho Yeo-Jeong) and a man who claims to have killed 11 people. There is, of course, more going on than it first seems, but also a push and pull between interviewer and interviewee in which the tables are always turning.

One might debate the wisdom of entering a hotel room with a man who says he’s a serial killer (Jung Sung-Il), but Sun-ju insists she’s agreeing to meet him not because she could really use an exclusive, but because he told her she could save his next victim by agreeing to interview him properly. She has no way of knowing whether he’s telling the truth, but leans towards assuming he’s a crank seeing as the victims he named didn’t have any obvious connections and were all killed in different ways, but still it’s a risky business. Despite assuring him that she hadn’t told anyone about their meeting, Sun-ju is being watched over by her policeman boyfriend Sang-woo (Kim Tae-Han) who is in the room below waiting to strike.

As for why the psychiatrist might want to be interviewed, he describes it as if it’s a kind of therapy session in which he can interrogate himself to ensure his practice is still justified. He believes it is because he only kills bad people that have harmed his patients and sees it as just another part of his treatment plan in alleviating his patients’ suffering as if he were excising a painful tumour from their lives. To that extent, it’s as if he’s providing extrajudicial justice in the face of a justice system in which he believes many have lost faith when criminals get off with light sentences while victims and their families will suffer forever. According to the psychiatrist, revenge is the best way to alleviate their pain. 

Or perhaps, as Sun-ju says, he just likes killing people and is trying to rationalise his actions. After all, even if he doesn’t, the patients probably feel guilty, though the psychiatrist claims to treat that too as part of his holistic service. Little by little he chips away at Sun-ju’s civility, pushing her towards an admission of her hypocrisy that if it were her in this situation and someone caused harm to her child, then she’d probably want them dead too. The psychiatrist obviously knows more about her than she does about him, including her career setbacks and difficult relationship with her teenage daughter whom she fears might rather live with her father instead.

That Sun-ju’s workplace troubles are concerned with a failed attempt to expose the wrongdoings of a major corporation who leaked toxic substances into the water supply leading to an increase in childhood cancers, further deepens the sense of rottenness in contemporary society. The corporation managed to cover it up by bribing prosecutors and politicians, implying that only a man like the psychiatrist is capable of providing true justice despite his claims that he isn’t trying to cure the slickness in his society only alleviate the pain of his patients. The doctor challenges Sun-ju’s ethics too, insisting that she as a duty to social justice and the safety of citizens, so rather than being here interviewing him she should have alerted law enforcement. Of course, Sun-ju has actually done that in having Sung-woo watch her, breaking her promise to keep it confidential, but perhaps trying to have her cake and eat it too. 

Still, the jury’s out on who is really interviewing who as the doctor and Sun-ju each attempt to dominate the narrative. This is indeed a psychodrama, or an extreme form of therapy in which the doctor is trying to force Sun-ju into a self-examination in order to alert her to things going on in her life that she is ironically unaware of. She, meanwhile, begins to get under his skin to the extent that he is mildly shaken from his mission, until hearing that there is another patient waiting to see him so his services may once again be needed. Tense, if eventually outlandish, the film reaches a rather troubling conclusion but is truly at its best in the verbal sparring between the doctor and Sun-ju each of whom has hidden agendas and a singular goal in mind.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Blazing Fists (BLUE FIGHT 蒼き若者たちのブレイキングダウン, Takashi Miike, 2025)

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Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa) and Ikuto (Danhi Kinoshita) are boys without brakes trying to get some kind of a handle on lives on that are racing away from them. Caught between compromised father figures, an oppressive social structure, and the overriding despair of a life without prospects, they feel themselves to be beaten down and defeated. But then Ikuto isn’t the sort of guy to be cowed by authority and is willing to speak truth to power even if it might not be advantageous for him to do so.

Indeed, Ikuto becomes a kind of saviour as a figure of idealised masculinity that embodies the paternal presence the other boys are lacking for one reason or another. Ryoma’s father isn’t really mentioned, though he appears to have a strained relationship with his mother’s boyfriend and freely admits that until he met Ikuto in juvenile detention he was floundering. Picked up for a series of petty crimes, he blames another boy, Kosuke, for his predicament having been forced to steal to pay an exorbitant sum to bullies he was unable to defend himself from. Ironically enough, Ikuto has actually been framed and for a crime that Ryoma himself committed and perhaps it’s their sense of defiance against injustice that allows him to stand strong in the face of a corrupt authority represented by the prison guard Hakamada (Wataru Ichinose). 

Though the warden at Ryoma’s admission had told him that he should think of his time there not as a punishment but an opportunity while the reformatory was a space of rehabilitation, but Hakamada openly tells the boys that they are inherently bad and their lives will amount to nothing. In the prison yard, they tend to the pigs which is what Hakamada deems them to be. He abuses his authority because he is weak and cannot bear it that Ikuto might be right when he says that the reason he’s working here as a guard is because he too has failed at life. When Hakamada tries to take revenge by jeopardising Ikuto’s parole, it’s his mother, Haruka, who stands up to him by wielding her old righteousness to insist that he too abide by the rules he is supposed to represent thereby presenting another more positive vision of resistance that goes beyond the purely physical and allows a petite middle-aged woman to challenge a physically opposing man in a position of authority.

Part of the reason that Hakamada had said that Ikuto was doomed was because his father was prison and Ikuto too had rejected him for that reason. He resented his father because of the way the stigma of crime was visited on him, that he became an undesirable child tainted by his father’s transgression. At this time, he presumably had a solid faith in the justice system and believed his father to be guilty but given his own experience of false imprisonment has now come round to the idea that his father could be telling the truth and is innocent after all. Their struggles become directly linked when Ikuto is scheduled to square off against the prosecutor’s son, but in a more spiritual sense they are both battling against an oppressive society.

This Ikuto slowly comes to see on realising that he and primary antagonist Jun are basically the same as Jun is also battling the spectre of his father, a yakuza. Rejected by those around him because of the stigma of being a yakuza’s son, Jun (whose name means “pure”), has turned inward in bitterness and become a violent thug attempting to order his life through physical dominance. Accepting that he too was careering towards a cliff edge, Ikuto reflects that Jun is still hanging on if barely by the skin of his teeth which is to say he can wants to be saved in the way that Ikuto has been. But it wasn’t the reform system or the prison guards that helped him see a way forward but an inspirational lecture from real life MMA star Mikuru Asakura on whose life the film is loosely based. Asakura tells the boys that they have a right to dream and that their goals are achievable if only they can put their minds to them. That they hear this from a big brother figure rather than an older man in a paternal position makes it clear that these boy must save themselves through mutual solidarity in place of the positive paternal presence that is missing in most of their lives.

The film is filled with figures of those who have turned their lives around from Asakura himself to the former yakuza who runs the dry bar where the kids hang out. The coach at their gym also provides a supportive presence that makes the ring a safe place. But the ring is of course life and the point is to keep fighting. Winning and losing aren’t important, all that matters is getting back up when someone knocks you down and staying in the fight. The young men are not adversaries but comrades supporting each other as they battle a world with few rewards and endless temptations. In Ikuto, Ryoma finds the strength to stop blaming others for his failures while trusting more in himself and learning to value this new community that he’s discovering. Harking back to the Crows Zero series and a wider tradition of high school delinquent movies, Takashi Miike makes a series of loving jabs at the genre but at the same time transforms it into something a little less angsty as these blazing fists are turned not on each other but against the world that refuses to give these young men a chance as they band together to demand the right to their dreams.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (전지적 독자 시점, Kim Byung-woo, 2025)

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Fed up with the ending of a web novel he’s been reading since his teens, Dokja (Ahn Hyo-seop) sends the author a message. By this stage, he’s the only reader left, a kind of “lone survivor”, if you will. But he tells the author that the ending has disappointed him and that he can’t accept that the main theme was that it’s alright to sacrifice the lives of others so that you alone can live. Adapted from the popular webtoon, Kim Byung-woo’s Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (전지적 독자 시점, Jeonjijeok Dokja Sijeom) is in part about the conflict between nihilistic pragmatism and selfishness, and a pure-hearted altruism that insists it’s possible for us all to survive and that surviving alone would be pointless anyway.

It only obliquely, however, touches on these themes in how they relate to the contemporary society in hinting at the destructive effects of capitalism. Dokja is the hero of this story, but he’s also a face in the crowd as a member of a constant stream of office workers on their way to work, not really so different from little ants squeezed between the fingers of powerful elites. Dokja at least feels himself to have lost out in this lottery, a contract worker let go by a conglomerate, while his sleazy boss Mr Han (Choi Young-joon) slobbers all over his female colleague, Sangha (Chae Soo-bin), who unlike him is no longer wedded to the corporate philosophy and is considering striking out on her own to do something that interests her personally. Perhaps the novel ending on the same day as his contract felt a little bit to much like the end of a world, which is what pushed him to write a message that in other ways seems uncharacteristically mean. 

But then the author tells him that if he doesn’t like this ending he can write his own, perhaps obliquely reminding him that he is free to change his future if he wants. Nevertheless, Dokja is soon thrown into the world of the novel where he is faced with a series of scenarios where he must choose whether to sacrifice the lives of others in order to save his own for the entertainment of celestial beings who watch the whole thing via live streams and occasionally sponsor interesting players. Dokja has an advantage in that he already knows what’s going to happen, but is also aware that things don’t always go the way they should and his own actions change the course of the narrative. He’s convinced that he has to save the “hero”, Jung-hyeok (Lee Min-ho), or the fantasy world will end, killing everyone inside it, but never really considers that he too can be the protagonist of his own story. 

He remains committed, however, that the only way to survive is through mutual solidarity even if he scoffs at the quasi-communist mentality at the Geumho subway station correctly guessing that it’s all a scam being run by a corrupt politician which muddies the water somewhat when it comes to the film’s politics. In any case, Dokja seems to believe that he must save Jung-hyeok not just physically but spiritually in proving to him that his nihilistic viewpoint is mistaken and the only way for them to survive is to support each other by pooling their skills and resources. In dealing with his own trauma and guilt over having once sacrificed someone else to ensure his own survival, Dokja is able to write a new ending for himself surrounded by his companions rather than as a lone survivor roaming a ruined land with nothing to look forward to except death.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s true that he thinks he needs a hero to save him rather than realising that he is also the hero of this story, while the fantasy world too is driven by capitalistic mentality in which Dokja must amass coins to be able to level up or literally buy his survival. Occasionally he wavers, wondering if the others have a point when they tell him he’s being foolish and should learn to just save himself no matter what happens to anyone else, but otherwise remains committed to rejecting the premise of the original novel’s nihilistic ending in insisting that there’s a way for us all to survive if only we can learn to be less selfish, trust each other, and work for the good of all.

Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy is available in the UK on digital download from 15th December.

UK Trailer (English subtitles)

The Unrighteous (원정빌라, Kim Seon-kuk, 2024)

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After discovering that all of his neighbours have become members of a religious cult, one young man tries to hold fast to his independence but finds himself confronted by the forces of conformity and mass hysteria in Kim Seon-kuk’s paranoid horror thriller, The Unrighteous (원정빌라, Wonjeong Villa). The film’s English title maybe somewhat misleading, though if anyone is unrighteous, it is the cult themselves rather than non-believer Ju-hyun (Lee Hyun-woo), while it’s also true that he lives in an unrighteous society obsessed with property values and social status.

It begins, however, with apartment complex horror as Ju-hyun gets into a vendetta with his upstairs neighbour Shin-hye (Moon Jeong-Hee) who first tries to bully him out of parking in “her” parking space which she is trying to hold for her husband who “always” parks there. Hearing strange sounds from above, Ju-hyun tries to complain about the noise, but Shin-hye ignores him and ironically insists that “neighbours should be more understanding” as if suggesting that Ju-hyun is being selfish and unreasonable and should rather make allowances for her son who is suffering from a serious illness. Ju-hyun had asked for quiet because his mother is recovering from recent surgery. 

The real problems start shortly after when it becomes apparent that Shin-hye has got religion after joining a Christian-leaning organisation that Ju-hyun has been warned is a cult that targets people with bogus surveys in order to recruit them. Though she had looked tired and took little interest in her appearance, Shin-hye is now nicely turned out with stereotypically middle-class housewife outfits, styled hair, and makeup. Grinning eerily, she seems to be intent on converting her neighbours. Ju-yhyun immediately earns her ire once again when he complains about her inviting the pastor to their residents committee meeting without prior notice. He’s not the only one who objects to being subjected to a religious lecture without his consent, though Shin-hye homes in on the neighbours’ various anxieties from job precarity to loneliness to win them over to her cause.

There seems to be a direct correlation between the literal cult Shin-hye is propagating and that of property ownership in that she often repeats that they are now all “homeowners” as opposed to tenants and “true owners of this land”. Ju-hyun is a property owner too, having paid off his mortgage at a comparatively young age, and himself hopes that the redevelopment project takes place so that he can move to a nicer apartment and have a better quality of life. Everyone is obsessed with how much more profit they might be able to make if the house prices rise in the area which is something the cult is also promising them happen. Ju-hyun isn’t disinterested in that, but also wants to see the town come back to life again and is heartened that so many people are moving to the area to take advantage of the currently lower than average prices.

Studying to become an estate agent, he seems to have an interest in finding people happy homes which might on some level be because of his own disordered familial background. Vague allusions are made to Ju-hyun’s long lost father being in some way abusive to the extent that Ju-hyun can’t forget the look in his eyes and is reluctant to let him back into their lives after he contact his mother to say he wants to apologise and make amends. It’s no surprise that he too has joined the cult, though the way that Ju-hyun reacts makes him something of a complicated hero and unrighteous in his actions. He justifies himself that he’s trying to keep his family safe and ensure the home he’s worked so hard to provide for them won’d be taken away, but his mother also has a point in resenting his bossiness and condescension as he repeatedly instructs her not to  have anything to do with the cult or open the door to strangers. When he has an opportunity to save his neighbours, he wonders whether he should bother given how mean to him they’ve all been through this whole ordeal.

In a sinister manner, the cult begins to encircle him as his employer and the leader of the redevelopment project turn out to be cult members. He’s fired from his job for refusing to join the cult, while the police seem to be in on it too and react to his attempts to explain with exasperation as if he were just a delusional conspiracy theorist. Only the local pharmacist with a side line in investigating cults is willing to help to help him. Nevertheless, the escalating darkness from trance-like religious mania to human sacrifice is quite steep even intended as satire that people would willingly sacrifice the lives of others in the name of house prices, even if they’re tricked into handing over the deeds to their properties to the cult become “the true owners of land”. Ju-hyun, however, resolutely refuses to drink the cool aid, in some ways quite literally, looking on with disdain as his neighbours dance in the street on receiving the news that the long awaited redevelopment project will indeed be happening as if it were a miracle fallen to them from some higher powers.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Big Deal (소주전쟁, Choi Yun-jin, 2025)

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When Korea’s biggest Soju conglomerate, Gukbo, is on the verge of bankruptcy in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and the CEO’s mismanagement, it provokes a national outcry but also the attention of a hundred foreign firms all swarming over Korea like vultures eager to get a piece of the pie. Loosely based on a real life incident, Choi Yun-jin’s Big Deal (소주전쟁, Soju Jeonjaeng) is more evenhanded than one might expect at once decrying the amoral business practices of American corporate imperialism while pointing out that maybe things aren’t perfect in Korea either with its dynastic approach to company management and workaholic lifestyle that comes at the cost of familial bonds.

In fact it sort of implies that In-beom’s (Lee Je-hoon) desire to send Gukbo into bankruptcy so they can take it over and flip it is a kind of revenge against his own workaholic father who passed away 10 years previously, his death presumably hastened by stress and overwork though what In-beom resents more than anything else is that he was never really much of a father to him. That might be why Gukbo’s earnest financial officer Pyo (Yoo Hae-jin) comes to fill that role. In-beom complains that Pyo is stupid and naive, knowing nothing of how the world works, but also that his stupidity makes him feel like an arsehole because it forces him to realise that he’s doing something wrong. 

Caught between In-beom whose firm, Solquin, are pretending to consult on the administration process but in reality feeding into to their subsidiary to buy up shares, and the CEO, Pyo is the only one thinking about what’s going to happen to all their employees when the place goes bust. Like In-beom’s father, Pyo is also a workaholic whose wife and daughter left him because he was never there. He remains dedicated to Gukbo, but not to the extent of breaking the rules, even if he eventually goes along with it when the CEO suggests a dodgy plan to undercut Solquin and maintain control of the company his father founded. What becomes apparent is that Seok (Son Hyun-joo) is out of his depth and that the only qualification he has is being the boss’ son. It’s his fault the company got into trouble because of his reckless expansion plans while he tries to cover up his failings through cronyism, playing golf with the great and the good while leaving Pyo to clean up the mess he’s made.

Nevertheless, for good or ill, Gukbo comes to represent a Korea preyed upon by venal foreign influence. When the plan is exposed, Pyo is sure that the creditors won’t agree to bankruptcy because they won’t be able to stand such a typically Korean business being placed into foreign hands. In-beom thinks that’s ridiculous and no one has that kind of patriotic attachment to a company, but it turns out he’s right and Solquin have an uphill battle in front of them. Yet even In-beom begins to tire of his colleagues’ underhandedness. Though there are a handful of women working at the American investment firm, the culture is extremely macho and misogynistic with liberal and frankly unprofessional use of the F-word as In-beom’s male colleagues make obnoxious jokes about who is getting their dick sucked by whom. Pyo and his team may drink too much, but at least they’re collegiate rather than adversarial.

The question is really whether as In-beom says making money is just that and can’t be either sleazy or noble, while Pyo definitely thinks there are right ways and wrong ways to earn. Solquin is definitely wrong, while Gukbo isn’t entirely right either. In-beom may have a point when he challenges his old-fashioned salaryman mentality of putting the company first every time, but the conclusion Pyo seems to come to is to let all go and just be yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to stoop to their dishonest ways of doing business, but equally it doesn’t mean you have to let them walk all over you either. Capitalism is an inherently corrupt system, but there’s not a lot either of them can do about that even if eventually meeting somewhere in the middle as Pyo loses his faith in chaebol culture and In-beom realises he’s just as disposable when his American bosses chew up him and spit him out as soon as he’s served his usefulness. A closing title reminds us we’re still dealing with a lot of these problems 20 years later with companies that are too big to fail and inadequate regulation though Pyo at least seems to have found a happy medium doing what he loves on his own terms.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Choi Yun-jin directed this film, but her name was later removed from the credits after being fired by the production company who accused her of misappropriating the script.

The Rose: Come Back to Me (Eugene Yi, 2025)

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Korean indie group The Rose have been making waves for close to a decade, starting out in Seoul and now having signed with a US label and playing the Coachella festival. They cite their musical message as healing, in part because music has healed them at various points in their lives, both individually and as a group, though they have faced a series of hardships, from the rigours of the K-pop industry to an exploitative label and a potentially explosive scandal.

Eugene Yi’s documentary is however more of a puff piece interested in how the band heroically overcame their struggles rather than the nature of the struggles themselves, despite a few talking heads outlining the oppressive and exploitative nature of the Korean music industry. According to them, what makes The Rose interesting is they all started out in K-pop training schools, but each found it wasn’t for them. As one of them points out, only 0.01% of applicants get to debut, and only 0.01% of the ones that do are successful. Sammy, a Korean-American musician who took part in a Korean TV talent competition, says that he developed body image problems because of the way the agency tried to control his appearance and eventually dropped out because he lost the joy of music in having to literally dance to their tune. 

Others of the band members had similar experiences before coming together as a street band and eventually forming The Rose as four young guys with a dream. They got an apartment together and eked out a living while spending all their time practising and writing songs. But as so often in these stories, they were picked up by a label who only wanted Sammy. He convinced them to take the others too, but they also tried to control the direction of their music and rejected their choice of an intensely personal, self-written debut song, insisting they needed something poppier and more upbeat. The joke was on them, though, because the song took off on its own on YouTube and became a hit across Europe. The label sent them touring, but otherwise did little else and misled them about the financial situation to the point that they decided to sue.

Suing your label is pretty unheard of in Korea where going against your team is socially difficult, as is challenging flaws in the system rather than just trusting in it and going with the flow. Had they lost, it would have been the end of the band and they’d all be financially ruined for the rest of their lives. This was also the time that Covid hit, with two of the band members going into the military. Along with the psychological pressure of the label playing divide and conquer to set them at each other’s throats, the anxiety of the court case strained Jeff’s mental health to the point of hospitalisation. He wondered if he should give up music if this was what it was doing to him, but then rediscovered its healing qualities. 

Having won their court case, the band reunited and signed with a label in the US only to be hit by another scandal once they started to make a name for themselves and Sammy’s former conviction for drug use after being caught with a small amount of marijuana was exposed in the papers. Any kind of involvement with drugs is a no-go in the Korean entertainment industry and can end careers or worse. Nevertheless, the band seem to have bounced back from it if even Sammy laments the guilt he feels for letting down his bandmates’ parents though he’d always been upfront with the guys that it might come out some day. Jeff too had remarked on the additional guilt he felt towards his parents for becoming ill, demonstrating that they’re all nice guys who care about their families and are serious about their healing message. Jeff is touched when members of the audience tell him their music helped them get through a loss or overcome their suicidal thoughts. 

Nevertheless, the film does rather seem set up to emphasise those messages and make the guys look as good as possible in addition to painting them as an authentic artistic rebellion against the soullessness of K-pop with its manufactured stars who are kept on a tight leash and trained to within an inch of their lives so that almost nothing of their individual expression remains. A little more shade might have helped to offset the hagiographic tone, though it’s true enough the band has talent and they’ve worked incredibly to get to where they are overcoming a series and crises and hardships along the way.

The Rose: Come Back to Me screened as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

A Writer’s Odyssey 2 (刺杀小说家2, Lu Yang, 2025)

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Arriving four whole years after the previous instalment, A Writer’s Odyssey 2 (刺杀小说家2, cìshā xiǎoshuōjiā 2) is in many ways a very different film. While its predecessor was a fairly serious affair tackling some of the issues of the modern China such as child trafficking, machinations of the oligarch class, and generalised capitalistic oppression, the sequel is a typically mainstream fantasy blockbuster complete with some fairly goofy humour and the ultimate message that despotism is bad and people should work for the good of others rather than just themselves.

In that regard at least, it’s another pointed attack on authoritarians and corporate bullies like Aladdin’s Li Mu. The entire Aladdin plot is, however, jettisoned, which seems like a missed opportunity, especially as it means that Yang Mi does not reprise her role and we don’t get any answers about who the boy was with Tangerine at the end of the previous film nor whether the “death” of Redmane led to the death of Li Mu in the real world as he feared it would. In truth, even Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) is somewhat sidelined. Six years later, he, Tangerine (Wang Shendi), and Kongwen (Dong Zijian) are living as a family running a restaurant. Though Kongwen finished his Godslayer novel, it was stolen by an influencer, Cicada (Deng Chao), who accused him of plagiarism which got Kongwen blacklisted in the publishing industry and unable to earn any money through writing. As he’d said in the previous film, it was writing that gave his life meaning so now he’s started to become hopeless and depressed. 

Meanwhile, he’s begun to dream of Ranliang and the return of Redmane who has survived but as a mortal rather than as a god and is determined to get back everything he’s lost. This means, in meta terms, that he wants to challenge “god”, or really Kongwen, whom he sees as the architect of his fate. On the one level, it seems as if he’s trying to insist on his own free will and is sick of being controlled by unseen forces, but in reality he just wants the powers of a god for himself so he can oppress people properly. Nevertheless, this means he has to come to our world in order to square off against Kongwen, the writer.

It has to be said the vision of the real world on offer this time is much glossier and devoid of the kind of darkness that haunted Guan Ning. Though they’re worried because the restaurant’s not doing so well, the trio seem to have pretty nice lives with relatively few other problems outside of Cicada who is now aligned with Redmane in place of Li Mu standing in for a venal class of confluencers. Kongwen is then fighting a war on two fronts as Redmane taunts him to come over to the dark side and turn his fantasy story of good defeating evil into one of nihilistic despair echoing the way that Kongwen feels in his life.

The meta drama of the writer pursued by his characters is resolved in a fairly unexpected way with Kongwen effectively giving up his godlike powers and allowing his characters to save themselves through “mortal courage” rather divine intervention. Though Renliang had been plunged into chaos as the power vacuum Redmane left behind saw his former allies effectively become warlords reenacting the warring states period, in the end it’s solidarity that saves them as they agree to band together to oppose Redmane while offering the possibility of forgiveness if only Redmane can give up his quest for domination and agree to work for the common good. 

Kongwen learns something similar, remembering his writing isn’t solely an economic activity, and not only about himself but giving something back to the world. Torn between the anarchic ambition of Redmane and the righteousness of Jutian (Chang Chen), modelled after his own absent father, he struggles to find meaning amid the injustices of the modern China having been unfairly cancelled by netizens after being falsely accused of plagiarism by the man who stole his story and asks himself if it’s worth sacrificing his friends in a last ditch attempt to save them through teaming up with the forces of darkness. Nevertheless, Lu frames his tale in a much more lighthearted fashion as symbolised by demonic armour Darkshade’s sudden merging with a lettuce to become unexpectedly adorable. As such, it feels like something of a missed opportunity in choosing not to build on the foundations of the first film but sidestep them completely. Even so in upping its production values and the quality of its visual effects, the sequel embraces a new sense of fun which is definitely different but possessed of its own charm.

Trailer (English subtitles)

A Writer’s Odyssey (刺杀小说家, Lu Yang, 2021)

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“As long as I keep writing, my existence has meaning,” according to the titular writer at the centre of Lu Yang’s action fantasy, A Writer’s Odyssey (刺杀小说家, cìshā xiǎoshuōjiā). His art, though derided as trivial, is it seems the best form of resistance to the feudalistic capitalism that has overtaken the authoritarianism of the communist past. Broken father Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) desperately searches for his daughter Tangerine who has been missing six years, assumed to have been swallowed by China’s child trafficking network, only to find himself plagued by bizarre dreams of a fantasy city.

The city is, it seems, that of Kongwen’s (Dong Zijian) fantasy novel series which he live streams over the internet. Whenever something bad happens to the evil despot at the story’s centre, Lord Redmane, it’s visited on the CEO of vast corporation Aladdin (read: Alibaba), Li Mu (Yu Hewei), which has just launched the Lamp App which will they claim “resculpt time” so that time and distance are no longer an issue. Li Mu is panicked because Kongwen has said he’s going to end the series in three days and it doesn’t look good for Lord Redmane, so he’s fearful for his life. Noticing that Guan Ning has some sort of super power in which he can hurl rocks with unusual accuracy, he leverages Tangerine’s disappearance to convince him to knock off Kongwen in exchange for his daughter’s location.

Of course, the fantasy world and the “real” are connected in more ways than one with Ranliang conjuring visions of the Cultural Revolution in which the despotic leader is literally protected by hordes of mindless “Red Guards” while pitting one district against another and seemingly destroying all art. Li Mu, meanwhile, is destroying human innovation with his apps and treats the lives of others with callous disregard. His right-hand woman Tu Ling (Yang Mi), originally resentful of Guan Ning in blaming him for losing his child having been abandoned by her own parents, becomes disillusioned with his tactics on realising that he lied to Guan Ning and the candidates he picked for Tangerine are five random girls none which is likely to be her. Figuring out that she’s probably next after Li Mu knocks off Kongwen, who is also the son of his former business rival that he seemingly betrayed to take control of the company, and gets rid of Guan Ning for good measure, her allegiances begin to change creating a kind of parallel with Tangerine and the mysterious boy hanging around with her.

Meanwhile, in the fantasy world, Kongwen teams up with a demonic suit of armour that feeds on his blood but is also a near unbeatable killing machine that may or may not be evil. Guan Ning comes to believe that the fantasy world may be the only place he can find Tangerine and switches side from agreeing to kill Kongwen to deciding to protect him so that he can finish the story and possibly write a better ending for his fantasy character who as yet remains undefined. He’s later revealed to be a member of the brainwashed Red Guard, which may be appropriate as his former job was a banker which is to say a soldier of capitalism. Only art can break his programming in the form of Tangerine’s flute playing which reawakens his humanity and memory. 

The implication seems to be that China cannot escape either its communist past or capitalist future except through the liberation that comes with artistic endeavour. When Guan Ning is tasked with killing Kongwen, he follows him about town and hears his neighbours run him down as a “parasite”, a man of almost 30 with no real job and no income who is still being financially supported by his mother. This information might be offered to make it seem less bad to kill him, as if in this hyper-capitalistic society his life is worth nothing because that’s what he contributes. Kongwen feels this a little himself and has suicidal thoughts, but also insists that his life has meaning precisely because he writes and expresses all of this frustration with the contemporary society along with his buried resentment towards Li Mu for the death of his father and theft of his birthright. Shot like a video game, the film’s sprawling fantasy-esque world hints at still more adventures to come in this David and Goliath competition in which Kongwen and Guan Ning attempt to overthrow this cruel and corrupt order to find a way to free themselves from its authoritarian cruelties if only in their minds.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Red Nails (홍이, Hwang Seul-gi, 2024)

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A not quite middle-aged woman watches as her mother takes an aerobics class with other similarly aged people at a nursing home. The attendant turns to her and remarks that it can’t have been an easy decision, leading us to think that she has reluctantly decided her mother may be better off living where she can be properly looked after. But Hong (Jang Sun) has actually arrived to take her mother home. Not because she’s had a change of heart, and not exactly because she’s having a hard time and can’t afford to pay for the home any more, but because she’s realised her estranged mother’s a cash cow and the only one she has left to tap.

Hwang Seul-gi’s complex drama Red Nails (홍이, Hong-i) never shies away from its heroine’s flaws even if it tries its best to empathise with her. Hong is clearly irresponsible with money. The piled up boxes in her living room hint that she may have fallen victim to a multi-level marketing scam, but whatever the root causes are, she’s pretty much bankrupt with the bailiffs about to be sent in to seize her goods due to her phenomenally large debts. Even so, we later see her going on shopping sprees as if she were trying to fill some sort of void through guilty consumerism that is really just punishing herself by making her situation even worse. 

Hong’s borrowed money from an ex-boyfriend who has since married someone else but continues to sleep with her while badgering Hong for his money back, claiming his wife’ll throw a fit if he doesn’t get it. Meanwhile, she’s engaged in a fantasy romance with a man from an app, Jin-woo, whom she misleads about her financial circumstances and later uses when she needs a free ride. Hong has a habit of taking advantage of people, including her mother’s old friend Hae-joo who agrees to watch her in the day. Hong often messes her around, staying out late without calling and just expecting Hae-joo is figure something out. Hae-joo eventually confronts her about her unreasonable behaviour while taking advantage of her free labour, but Hong tries to give her money as if that was the problem. Hae-joo is insulted, and bringing money into the equation only threatens to change the nature of the relationship. It makes Hae-joo feel cheap and used when she had been doing this as a friend because she cared about Seo-hee. 

Seo-hee, meanwhile, seems ambivalent about her new living standards and, at times, berates Hong complaining that she wishes she’d never been born. It’s not clear what happened in Hong’s childhood, but they evidently did not get on and still don’t now. Seo-hee wants to go home, complaining that there’s a thief in the house though whether or not she knows that Hong has been dipping into her savings to pay off her debts, she’s still aware that she brought home because she needed money rather than companionship. 

But then Hong is also lonely, and her romance with Jin-woo is an attempt to escape her disappointing circumstances. Her ex suggests she once dreamed of becoming a teacher, but is currently teaching a literacy class for a group of older woman at a local institute where she also cleans the toilets. She also has a second job directing traffic at a construction site where the foreman hates her, docking her pay for neglecting her duties by using her phone while on the job. She cannot her escape her debts through any legitimate means, though that hardly justifies stealing from her mother. 

Even so, it appears that on some level Hong wanted comfort and companionship along with her mother’s approval. As they live together, they begin to draw closer but at the same time it’s clear that they remember things differently, though whether Hong is right to blame Seo-hee’s dementia or has misremembered herself is destined to be an eternal mystery. Hong tries to fulfil her mother’s dream of lighting sparklers, but the pair are yelled by some kind of environmental officer and forced to put them out. Hong looks on forlornly as the glow fades away as if symbolising the flame going out of the relationship between the two women. Despite their growing closeness, there are some things that it seems can never really be made up and all Hong really has is a frustrated memory of a longed-for closeness that can never really be.

Red Nails screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)