Tag: Gong Myung

Killing Romance (킬링 로맨스, Lee Won-suk, 2023) [Fantasia 2023]

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A once famous actress sets out to reclaim her autonomy from an abusive, controlling, billionaire husband in Lee Won-suk’s hilariously off the wall comedy Killing Romance (킬링 로맨스). Partly a satire on the extreme power of wealth, social inequalities in contemporary South Korea, toxic masculinity and rampant patriarchy, along with the stigma of failure and loserdom, the film is also an inspirational rallying cry to break of oppressive social codes and embrace your authentic self even if others don’t quite understand. 

It’s a sudden fall from grace for top star Yeo-rae (Lee Hanee) that causes her to rethink her career goals when a sci-fi movie she starred in becomes a cult hit for all the wrong reasons leaving her a national laughing stock derided for her poor performance. Deciding to get out of the spotlight for a while, she travels to the remote island of Qualla but is immediately mugged by locals and rescued by mysterious Korean billionaire environmentalist Jonathan (Lee Sun-kyun) who sees them off with a well placed Taekwondo neck chop. One has to wonder if Jonathan had that set up, but in any case Yeo-rae soon falls in love with her handsome suitor and the pair marry. 

But seven years later it’s clear the marriage has not been a success. Yeo-rae is miserable, trapped in the ostentatious house Jonathan has had built in Seoul which is covered in oversize pictures of himself in muscle poses. He controls everything in her life right down to what she eats because he likes her at a certain weight and even goes so far as to cancel a job offer on her behalf telling the director of a movie she wanted to star in that she’s mentally ill while pelting her with tangerines for daring to envision a life as anything but a doll for him to play with. 

His control over her is born of a sense insecurity that his money cannot cover. Attempting to strike an alpha male persona, Jonathan wears a fake moustache and struts around in ostentatious outfits but is also always accompanied by his well-built bodyguard Bob while waited on hand and foot by twin servants he refers to as “The Susans”. The romantic song he uses to control Yeo-rae through a kind of brainwashing isn’t even his own but a pop hit from 1997, while Yeo-rae tries to recover herself by singing her own iconic hit Yeo-raeism (a repurposed version of the classic hit by Rain, Rainism) with its defiant chorus of “I’m gonna be a bad girl” in her attempt to shake off Jonathan’s patriarchal programming. 

Jonathan’s bid for hyper masculinity, his hatred of losing, is subverted in the the softness of Yeo-rae’s top fan Bum-woo (Gong Myung) who is perpetual student on his fourth attempt to get into Seoul University in the hope of fulfilling familial expectations. On realising his new next-door neighbour is none other than his favourite idol, Bum-woo figures out that she’s trapped and abused by Jonathan and is determined to rescue her even if it means killing him but is in reality too nice to carry it through. A bizarre series of assassination plots using paper aeroplanes and Jonathan’s personal kryptonite peanuts along with an attempt to steam him to death in a sauna flounder when a remorseful Bum-woo saves him at the last second potentially swayed by Jonathan’s promise to “change his life” in gratitude. But in the end neither he nor Yeo-rae are fully capable of actually killing him or escaping his control. After all, “Jonathan is above the law” as Yeo-rae laments.

Then again, even he seems to be a little swayed by her song as do his yellow-clad henchmen slowly moving to the music persuaded by her beat over his. The battle ends in a huge sing-off in which Yeo-rae is joined by her ever supportive fan club and finally gets to dance to her own tune accompanied by a cohort of “losers” fighting back against sneering chaebol oppression though vengeance eventually comes from an unexpected source. Quirky in the extreme, Lee plays with a retro ‘70s aesthetic framing the story as a fairytale performed Log Lady-style by an old woman for a TV children’s book hour while throwing in constant references to ostriches and tangerines along with zany karaoke and musical sequences in a deadpan fantasia of self-actualisation that is quite simply sublime.

Killing Romance screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Hansan: Rising Dragon (한산: 용의 출현, Kim Han-min, 2022)

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“A battle of the righteous against the unrighteous” is how Admiral Yi (Park Hae-il) frames his resistance against the Japanese invasion, not a war between nations but an attempt to push back against the authoritarian ruthlessness of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s desire to conquer most of Asia in a bid to cement his historical legacy as his health continued to fail. Hansan: Rising Dragon (한산: 용의 출현, Hansan: Yongui Chulhyeon) is a kind of prequel to 2014’s The Admiral: Roaring Currents set five years earlier during Hideyoshi’s first campaign and pits the the wise and steadfast Admiral Yi against ambitious yet overconfident Japanese general Wakizaka* (Byun Yo-han). 

Wakizaka’s ruthless cruelty is not in dispute even as the film opens with him dispatching a report stating that he intends to destroy the Korean naval detachment harboured on the southern coast which it seems is all that stands between him and conquest of the peninsula in its capacity to disrupt his supply line. When some of his men return in defeat talking about a “Bokkaisen” with a dragon’s head spouting fire, Wakizaka orders them killed to stop them spreading rumours of supernatural threat among the troops. Retrieving what looks to be a dragon’s tooth from the ruined vessel he begins to realise there might be something their story but still doesn’t take the threat of Admiral Yi’s fleet very seriously. 


Admiral Yi meanwhile, who was wounded in the same battle pitching his bow and arrow against a Japanese rifleman, is plagued by dreams and anxiety while trying to sort out a strategy for dealing with the Japanese invasion. Some of his fellow officers think offence is the best defence and they should try to strike before Wakizaka is able to amass his forces, while others think they should play it safe and continue to defend the coast. He and his chief engineer are working on improvements to their turtle boat which had so spooked the Japanese soldiers at the previous battle but at the same time had its limitations. They don’t call it a turtle boat for nothing, on ramming into the Japanese vessel its dragonhead became lodged in the side locking the two boats in a deathly embrace. Yi suggests removing it, but as it turns out the ability to latch on to the enemy like a snapping turtle can also be an advantage if you know how to use it while figuring out how to get the best out of limited resources, along with managing interpersonal relations, turns out to be Wakizaka’s weakness. 

Ever ambitious, Wakizaka is distracted by petty rivalry with his co-general who disagrees with his strategies and eventually betrays him. A Korean-speaking Japanese retainer sent as a spy later decides to defect precisely because of this ruthless disregard for the lives of one’s fellow soldiers, struck by Yi’s personal presence on the battlefield and willingness to put himself in harm’s way to protect his men. Though he is originally viewed with suspicion by some, Junsa (Kim Sung-kyu) is embraced as a fellow soldier after joining the defence forces at an inland fortress and told that all that is necessary is that he have a “shared righteous spirit” fighting together against the “unrighteous” Japanese invasion. 

In any case, neither Wakizaka or the Japanese care very much about Korea all they’re doing is clearing a path to China. Meanwhile, the nervous king continues to travel North leaving his generals fearful he will defect to the Ming and they will end up losing their sovereignty to China if not to Japan. Wakizaka’s strategy is somewhat hubristic, leaving himself vulnerable in the rear as he pushes forward while using land tactics to fight a war at sea and thereby allowing Yi to set a trap for him perfectly tailored to his vain complacency. Wakizaka may have the numbers, but Yi has superior technology and the respect of his men. Quite fittingly the real Wakizaka was marooned on an island after the battle and had to survive on seaweed while waiting for his chance to escape. With plenty of spy action, double crossings and betrayals, Kim Han-min saves the big guns for the final naval battle which begins in ominous fog before exploding in all out war but still makes clear that the battle is on the side of righteousness and that Yi owes his victory to human solidarity and compassion (leaving aside his torture of suspected spies) and Wakizaka his defeat to hubris and cruelty. 

Hansan: Rising Dragon screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival and is in US cinemas now courtesy of Well Go USA.

*these subtitles use Wakizaka but his name is sometimes also romanised as Wakisaka.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: Courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

Extreme Job (극한직업, Lee Byeong-heon, 2019)

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Extreme Job poster 2Another in the increasingly popular trend of multi-territory simultaneous productions, Twenty director Lee Byeong-heon’s Extreme Job (극한직업, Geukan Jigeop) shares its premise with recent Chinese hit Lobster Cop but swaps low budget zaniness for the kind of high concept comedy that dominated Korean cinema in the 2000s. Where the Chinese version was perhaps bold in making its law enforcers look like idiots, the Korean version is very much in the long tradition of idiotic but sincere policemen eventually making good, if perhaps more by accident than design.

The film opens with Chief Go (Ryu Seung-ryong) dangling on a window washing wire and making small talk with his quarry who then manages to get away leaving Go quite literally spinning in the wind. The rest of the team give chase, but the guy eventually ends up in a bad way with the gang’s exploits causing a multi-car pileup and a significant amount of public damage for which Go and his team are now responsible. Facing the threat of disbandment, the team senses opportunity when they get a lead on the Korean HQ of a notorious international drug gang and vow to break the case before a rival squad to prove their worth as police officers.

Bedding in for a 24-hr stakeout, Go & co hole up in a small fried chicken restaurant which happens to be right next to the bad guys’ hide-out only to discover the moribund eatery will soon be closing. The good news is the property is up for sale and Chief Go, borrowing the life savings of rookie Jae-hoon (Gong Myung), decides it’s worth the investment to crack the case. The only problem is, despite having been the only visitors for days, the guys keep getting interrupted by potential customers and are forced to open the chicken shop for real as a cover with the secretly excited officer Ma (Jin Seon-kyu) as chief fryer. Ma’s family recipe rib sauce proves an unexpected hit with chicken lovers and so a new food sensation is born, which is an inconvenience when you’re trying to balance running a restaurant with taking down a drug den.

Like Lobster Cop, Extreme Job satirises modish internet success as something as down to earth and ordinary as fried chicken becomes the latest foodie sensation. So taken with their success are they, that the guys begin to forget about the drug dealers in order to facilitate their chicken business all the while conveniently forgetting that they’re technically moonlighting even if it’s in service of an active investigation (albeit one they weren’t actually assigned to). Deciding that they’ve gone too far the guys raise the price to extreme levels, but that only makes the problem worse as does an attempt to rebuff the attentions of a foodie TV programme who then take against them and attempt to ruin their reputation at the worst possible moment.

Meanwhile, Go’s loyal wife is pleased with the extra money coming in but also suspicious. She doesn’t really like him being a policeman – mostly because his nickname is “zombie” on account of all the times he’s nearly died, but she probably wouldn’t want to be married to a chicken shop manager either. For some reason, owning a chicken shop seems to be a shameful occupation that everyone is embarrassed about, though through his unexpected business success Go eventually learns to embrace his inner chicken man and become a better police officer because of it.

The one officer intent on watching the bad guys finds himself excluded from the group as the others regard him as a shirker for not helping out with the chicken business. Nevertheless, in true cop comedy fashion, it’s team work that counts as the guys come to understand their complimentary strengths and start working together as a unit so they can take down the drug dealers if in bumblingly idiosyncratic fashion. As if to ram the point home, Lee closes with Leslie Cheung’s iconic theme from A Better Tomorrow running in the background to remind us that this has all been about brotherhood, togetherness, and holding the line as much as it’s been about fried chicken success. Slapstick laughs collide with ironic familial comedy and a dose of mild social commentary as the bumbling cops eventually make good by embracing their inner chicken men and reclaiming their dignity in the process.

Extreme Job was screened as part of the 2019 Udine Far East Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)