Tag: Jun Suk-Ho

Special Delivery (특송, Park Dae-min, 2022)

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“Why is it so hard to live?” a little boy asks after finding himself on the run with a strange woman who seems to be the only person interested in helping him. Situating itself in an upside-down world of backstreet crime, Park Dae-min’s high octane thriller Special Delivery (특송, Teuksong) is in part about how hard it is to live amid constant moral compromise as the heroine finds herself torn between her better judgement and human feelings in trying to rescue her human cargo not only from the bad guys chasing him but from a duplicitous society. 

Technically speaking, Eun-ha (Park So-dam) is a delivery driver yet the services her firm provides are highly specialised promising to deliver anything anywhere by whatever means possible. In practice this often seems to mean transporting gangsters on the run from their hideouts to the nearest port before rival gangs can catch up with them as we see Eun-ha do with spectacular skill in the opening sequence. Other than the practice of frequently switching out license plates, what she’s doing in itself isn’t really illegal but is definitely crime adjacent and potentially dangerous. She is however well paid, arguing with her boss/mentor/father figure for a pay rate increase to an unprecedented 50/50 split in proceeds, though she lives a fairly modest life in a cosy apartment with her beloved cat Chubby whom she watches via security cam while waiting around for a fare. When her boss agrees to do a rush job for a Chinese gangster she tells him it’s a bad idea but ends up going along with it only to get drawn into the big news story of the day when a former pro-baseball player turned match fixing underworld figure blows the whistle and runs off with all the gang’s money. Eun-ha was supposed to drive him and his son Seo-won (Jung Hyeon-jun) to a port to leave the country but the bad guys who turn out to be corrupt police officers get there first and Eun-ha ends up with the kid and a bag full of money but no plan B. 

Drawing inspiration from John Cassavetes’ Gloria, the film develops into something of a buddy comedy as Eun-ha finds herself on the run with Seo-won having gone back for him after her boss suggested handing him off to an associate “who deals with children”. As we discover the child reminds her of her younger self being all alone with no other relatives or friends who could take care of him. Even when he reveals he might have a mother after all, it turns out to be a dead end because no one wants to get involved in this dangerously escalating underworld crisis. Yet the found family of the marginalised at the Busan junkyard where Eun-ha is based have more moral integrity than the world around them even if her boss’ solution for what to do about Seo-won isn’t ideal either. “Life is going alone” the corrupt police officer later sneers having repeatedly stated the necessity of staking one’s life to win such a big payout, but what Eun-ha is discovering is that it’s about going together trying to save the boy not only from the dangerously out of control corrupt police officers but from the moral bankruptcy of the contemporary society in which money is the only thing that matters. 

Overcoming both persistent sexism and societal discrimination Eun-ha proves herself a top operator in her field, Park choreographing a series of genuinely impressive car chases and visceral fight scenes as Eun-ha has to think her way through to take out the tougher, stronger bad guys while trying to protect Seo-won from danger on all sides. Her crime-adjacent existence tells her he’s not her responsibility but still she wants to complete her mission and deliver him somewhere safe much as she was rescued as a child by someone who might have felt much the same but chose to take her in anyway. With its neon lighting and retro score, Special Delivery harks back to an age of classic car chase thrillers with a stand-out performance from Parasite’s Park So-dam as a tough as nails getaway driver with nerves of steel fighting for humanity in an increasingly inhumane world. 

Special Delivery screened as part of this year’s Udine Far East Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Miss & Mrs. Cops (걸캅스, Jung Da-won, 2019)

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When the Burning Sun scandal exploded in early 2019 it promised but perhaps did not deliver a reckoning with the generalised misogyny at the heart of a fiercely patriarchal society. Almost a year previously, 12,000 women had assembled at Hyehwa Station to protest the prevalence of “molka” or spy cam pornography in which footage captured of ordinary women through the use of hidden cameras in ladies’ bathrooms, changing areas, and fitting rooms had been uploaded to the internet without their knowledge or consent. Despite all of this, there has been relatively little progress. Miss & Mrs. Cops (걸캅스, Girl Cops), a lighthearted comedy dealing with the weighty issues of molka, date rape, and the indifference with which they are treated by an overwhelmingly male police force obsessed with targets and performance, was filmed before the Burning Sun story broke but drops neatly into the post-scandal society as two women discover that they’re on their own when it comes to taking down a vicious drug gang. 

Mi-young (Ra Mi-ran) was once an ace detective well known for her ice cool arrests, but after marrying a feckless man who repeatedly failed to pass the bar exam she was forced to leave active policing and take an admin job in the complaints department for higher pay. Her sister-in-law, Ji-hye (Lee Sung-kyung), has since joined the force as a rookie officer but has little support amongst her colleagues and is often in trouble for her worryingly aggressive policing which eventually gets her “demoted” to complaints where she ends up working with Mi-young. While they’re busy bickering, a young woman arrives looking lost and confused but is frightened off by a rowdy group of men before she can say anything. As she’s left her phone behind, Mi-young chases after her, but the woman immediately steps out into traffic and is hit by a car. Obviously extremely concerned, Mi-young and Ji-hye get their tech expert colleague to Jang-mi (Choi Soo-young) to help them crack the phone and discover a compromising photo of the young woman posted on an illicit web channel promising to release the full video when it reaches 30,000 likes. 

Talking to her friend, Mi-young and Ji-hye realise that the young woman has tried to take her own life out of shame because of what these men did to her. Yet their attempts to report the matter to the legitimate authorities fall on deaf ears. Ji-hye’s colleagues joke and complain about having to investigate “perverts” instead of doing “real” policing, as if it’s all just meaningless silliness. Back when Mi-young was on the force she was placed into a special woman’s squad dedicated to dealing with crimes against women. Ji-hye quite rightly points out that times have moved on and the woman’s squads were in their own way essentially sexist in that they were created because the male police force did not regard crimes against women as “serious”, nor did they regard female officers as “real” police, so they killed two birds with one stone to allow them to get on with more “important” matters. 

The women realise that they’ll have to deal with this on their own, but even once they do discover that the male officers are only too keen to take the credit for exposing a drug ring while leaving the “peeping toms” to the ladies as not worth their time. Ji-hye’s boss even lets his mask slip in irritatedly suggesting she’s being over emotional because she is a woman and should let the boys get on with their jobs, but it’s only when she has a moment of impassioned rage explaining to them that they’re consistently failing in their duty to protect the women of Korea that they are finally shamed into realising the consequences of their lack of concern. 

Meanwhile, each of the women has been in some way been deliberately obstructed in their career solely for being a woman. Mi-young was forced off the force and is now in danger of losing her complaints job because of budget cuts. An older woman doesn’t tick any boxes on the employment quotas and so they have no reason to keep her. Ji-hye, meanwhile, is ignored by most of her team and left without support, and even Jang-mi, we discover, had NIS training but quit in resentment after they put her on a pointless Twitter monitoring programme. Their much maligned boss was also a part of the woman’s squad and wanted to continue in the police after having children, but they put her in charge of complaints instead. 

Yet Mi-young says she isn’t on the case because of female solidarity but because it makes her so angry that most of the women this happens to, like the woman who stepped in front of a moving car, blame themselves. The woman’s friend blames herself too for getting her friend into a dangerous situation because she convinced her to come to a private party with guys in a club thinking “they seemed OK”. In that sense it’s a shame that the villain concerned turns out to be a drug-addled sociopath who apparently only does the date rape stuff “for fun” because the real reason for all those clicks is data collection, rather than a perfectly ordinary guy who is probably someone’s son, brother, or even husband, not to mention chaebol kid or Kpop star. Still even if a little flippant in presentation (including some extremely unfortunate racist “humour”), Miss & Mrs Cops maybe no Midnight Runners but has its moments as its determined heroines strike back against patriarchal indifference by refusing to give up on justice.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Way Back Home (비밀의 정원, Park Sun-joo, 2019)

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Can you ever really “move on” from trauma, or do you simply have to learn to live with it? The heroine of Park Sun-joo’s Way Back Home (비밀의 정원, Bimil-eui Jeong-won) thought she’d made peace with the past by trying her best to forget it, but an unwelcome intrusion reminds her that it’s not only the echoes of something terrible that happened to her when she was very young that shaped her life, but everything that happened afterwards. Now preparing to move into a new phase, she realises that in order to start a new family she’ll have to repair her fractured relations with the old. 

As a high school student, Jeong-won (Han Woo-yun) was abducted and raped by a stranger who was never caught. 10 years later, she’s in her mid-20s and is preparing to move into a family home with her husband, Sang-u (Jun Suk-ho), a carpenter who works with her uncle (Yoo Jae-myung) and aunt (Yum Hye-ran) in their studio while she also has a job as a swimming instructor. The couple are currently trying for a baby, but Jeong-won recently had a miscarriage and fears that the assault may have affected her ability to bear a child despite the doctor’s assurances that there is nothing medically wrong. Then, she gets an unexpected phone call from a detective in her hometown informing her that they’ve had a hit on the DNA from her case and think they’ve caught the man who raped her but need her to come in and verify a few details. 

Not really wanting to revisit the past she’d convinced herself she’d moved on from, Jeong-won ignores the policeman’s calls but after he contacts her mother (Oh Min-ae) and turns up at her door, alerting Sang-u, she has no choice but to face the matter head on. Sang-u is understandably blindsided, not quite sure how to deal with this very sensitive new information, wanting to be there for his wife but frustrated that she doesn’t seem to want him involved. He tries to talk to her about it, but she flatly explains that it’s not something she’s prepared to discuss with him. 

Intellectually understanding that his wife needs space, Sang-u can’t help but feel shut out, hurt that Jeong-won doesn’t feel comfortable allowing him into this extremely vulnerable space. Jeong-won begins to pull away, pretending that everything’s fine, getting on with packing for their move as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, he begins to piece things together, realising that her past trauma must have something to do with her strained relationships with her mother and So-hui (Jung Da-eun), the younger sister she always seems to be reluctant to see. 

The traumatic event in itself is not the central source of Jeong-won’s suffering but the sense of rejection she felt from her family along with an internalised shame. Jeong-won’s mother sent her to live with her uncle and aunt because she thought it might be easier to move on in a different environment, but all Jeong-won felt was that her family no longer wanted her around. Jeong-won’s aunt thinks the reason she doesn’t want to see So-hui, who is around 10 years younger and therefore around the age she was at the time of the attack, is resentment in feeling that her mother sent her away to protect her younger sister from the social stigma of being involved with a case of sexual assault, but as might be expected the situation is far more emotionally complex than anyone is able to intuitively understand. 

So-hui, meanwhile, is also hurt, travelling to the city on her own to make sure her sister is alright because she isn’t answering her calls. Fearing rejection, Jeong-won distances herself from Sang-u, mourning the relationship she had with him which was founded partly on the fact he didn’t know and therefore existed in world in which the assault had never happened. She resents being worried over because other people’s concern only reminds her of her victimhood. During his summing up at the trial, the prosecution lawyer argues that Jeong-won’s life stopped in 2008 while her attacker went on living guilt free, leaving her to suffer alone. Jeong-won might not quite agree with that assessment, she thought she’d moved on and lived an otherwise happy, normal life despite the terrible thing which happened to her, but if she wants to move forward she will indeed have to face not only the source of her trauma but the familial fracturing which followed it, finding the way back home through emotional openness and understanding along with a willingness to be vulnerable in a place of safety.

Way Back Home screens on March 11/15 as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Introduction to the film by director Park Sun-joo from the Busan International Film Festival (activate English subtitles from the subtitle button)

Lucid Dream (루시드 드림, Kim Joon-sung, 2017)

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lucid dream posterA relatively rare phenomenon, a lucid dream is one in which the dreamer is aware they are asleep and “awake” enough to influence the outcome. Rather than using the ability to probe some kind of existential question, Korean science fiction thriller Lucid Dream (루시드 드림) focusses on the evidence gathering possibilities, going one step further than hypnotic regression to revisit old memories and zoom in on previously missed details.

Dae-ho (Ko Soo) is an investigative reporter currently in hot water over a controversial story. He’s also a doting single father to a little boy, Min-woo (Kim Kang-Hoon), who resolves to put his work aside for a day to take his son to an amusement park. Tragedy strikes as Dae-ho is busy having words with a paparazzo and then notices Min-woo has disappeared from his horse on the carousel. Catching sight of Min-woo walking off with another man, Dae-ho collapses, a tranquilliser dart sticking out of his leg. Dae-ho searches for his son with no concrete leads until, three years later, he hears about the possibilities of lucid dreaming and attempts to figure out exactly what happened that day by reliving it in his sleep.

Lucid Dream begins in true conspiracy thriller mode by introducing Dae-ho’s past as a controversial journalist responsible for ruining prominent businessmen by exposing their corruptions and manipulations of the laws everyone else is expected to abide by, but this potentially rich seam of social commentary is cut off in full flow as paternal concerns take centrestage.

Dae-ho is a single dad raising Min-woo alone with the help of a friendly nanny. Although he tells Min-woo his mother is “in America” no concrete information is given regarding her whereabouts though the fact that she is never heard from after Min-woo’s disappearance suggests she may be somewhere further away. Apparently a devoted and good father from the very beginning, Dae-ho will stop at nothing to find out what’s happened to his son. Three years on he remains distraught and desperate, willing to try anything that might help him uncover the truth. He finds an ally in the policeman handling his case who is in a similar predicament as his own daughter lies in a hospital bed, born with serious medical abnormalities. The true paternal love, determination, and sacrifice of men who are already good and devoted fathers raising pleasant, uncomplicated children define the drama as others attempt to subvert that same love in choosing to sacrifice one child in favour of another.

Though Dae-ho originally assumes the plot is directed at him alone, possibly revenge for his exposés, the truth is darker and moves towards child trafficking and the trade in illicitly harvested organs though this too is mostly glossed over in favour of competing parental needs. The men who’ve taken Min-woo veer between amoral gangsters and those who can’t stomach the outcome of their actions ultimately deciding to rebel against their own side, and even if the real perpetrator turns out to be someone not so different from Dae-ho, there can be little justification in this dark flip side to Dae-ho’s all encompassing paternal love.

The central premise of dreams and memory is an interesting one, but largely squandered by the increasingly dull narrative progression in which Dae-ho moves from clue to clue in linear fashion and along predictable genre lines. Most viewers even remotely familiar with similarly themed films will have correctly identified the villain right away thanks to the heavily signposted script, and will necessarily be disappointed by the rather predictable yet action packed finale.

Dae-ho travels through dream states, eventually learning to invade the dreams of others thanks to the guidance of a mysterious shared dreamer but the application is inconsistent and relegated to plot device only. The finale takes place within a dream and with the stakes heightened as it becomes clear death inside someone else’s mind results in death outside it, but the imagery remains clichéd as Dae-ho battles the villain inside a rapidly disintegrating building before being forced into a literal leap of faith. Despite the surface level grimness of the story, Lucid Dream remains firmly in mainstream thriller territory with under developed characters, dead end sub plots, and a satisfying if not entirely earned moment of final closure. It is, however, also a rare example of a broadly happy ending in a Korean procedural, in which a father’s love can and does save the day, if not the film.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Familyhood (굿바이 싱글, Kim Tae-gon, 2016)

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familyhoodThere are three kinds of actors – those who wait for roles, those who choose roles, and those who make roles for themselves. Ageing actress Go Ju-yeon (Kim Hye-soo) claims to be the third type, but at any rate she’s currently between gigs and facing professional scandals and personal crises from each and every direction. An unusual family drama, Familyhood (굿바이 싱글, Gotbai Singkeul, AKA Goodbye Single) is the coming of age story of a middle aged woman finally forced into adulthood through an unlikely friendship with a pregnant teenage girl.

A veteran TV star of over twenty years, Go Ju-yeon is perhaps better known for her scandalous relationships with younger men than her onscreen performance. Having worked hard to get where she is, perhaps Ju-yeon is entitled to play the diva, but her “difficult” personality alienates all but her most loyal staff. However, there’s one thing Ju-yeon has been missing – a traditional family life with a loving husband and children. She thinks her latest boyfriend, Ji-hoon (Kwak Si-yang),  a fellow TV star twelve years her junior, may the “the one”, but as it turns out he’s a no good two timing louse using her for her money and star status.

Heartbroken Ju-yeon swears off men forever and decides to buy herself a slice of unconditional love by becoming a mother. Turned down for an adoption because of her obvious unsuitability as evidenced by her appearances in the tabloids and by the fact that she just made this decision a few seconds ago, Ju-yeon figures it’s worth the nine month waiting period to do things the old fashioned way. Unfortunately she’s left it too late as a doctor’s appointment reveals she’s already heading into the menopause. Ju-yeon’s luck changes when she comes to the rescue of a teenage mother in the lift when a more conservative family decides it’s OK to lay into a vulnerable child they don’t even know.

Ju-yeon hits on an idea – buy the girl’s baby and raise it as her own. Dan-ji (Kim Hyun-soo) is an orphan living with her tough as nails older sister so it doesn’t take her long to agree to Ju-yeon’s suggestion even if she has her misgivings. Coming with her own contract prepared detailing her monetary compensation, Dan-ji has given this a lot more thought than the mother in waiting Ju-yeon but a sisterly bond eventually begins to develop between the two women despite the clear instruction to avoid getting attached. However, as Dan-ji’s presence begins to reinvigorate her fortunes, Ju-yeon begins to forget about her original career/romance replacer mission and has less and less time for the surrogate teenage daughter she irresponsibly promised to take care of.

Having lost her mother at a young age and spent all of her adult life in the pampered showbiz arena, Ju-yeon is a forty year old awkward woman child with a severe case of tunnel vision. As Dan-ji points out, Ju-yeon is a pure hearted sort but she’s also selfish and immature, jumping from one thing to the next and never stopping to consider the effect of her actions on those around her. Ju-yeon’s decision to become a mother is a similarly rash and selfish one as she only considers the upside of the boundless love she’s about to receive from this tiny bundle who is duty bound to love her, whilst failing to think about the practicalities of child rearing from the impact on her career and social life to the negative publicity she will receive as a single mother in a still relatively conservative society.

It’s these kinds of double standards which the film seems to want to lay bare as Ju-yeon attempts to come to the rescue of Dan-ji, albeit for selfish motives. Dan-ji, planning to get an abortion, has told no one other than her best friend about the pregnancy and is worried about the school finding out, not least because she is their representative at an inter school art contest. The boy who fathered her child had the temerity to ask if it was his before stealing a ring belonging to his mother to pay for an abortion. He is now off on an international golfing trip representing the country, but Dan-ji is imprisoned, kept out of sight so that Ju-yeon can claim the child is hers. Ju-yeon and Dan-ji first meet when Ju-yeon takes a smug family to task over their decision to loudly criticise Ju-yeon for her “immoral” ways in a hospital lift. After a long journey Ju-yeon will do the same again, only more loudly and even help to win over a few supporters from the collection of conservative mothers waiting for their kids after the art contest.

Kim creates a cosy world filled with calming pastel colours almost as if Ju-yeon really does live in a nursery. Ju-yeon wants to be a mother but still needs mothering herself and mostly gets it from her best friend and stylist Pyung-gu (Ma Dong-seok). Despite vowing to look after Dan-ji at least until her baby is born, it’s Dan-ji who mostly ends up looking after Ju-yeon, providing comfort and comparatively grown up advice whilst Ju-yeon mopes and eats ice-cream. Only when her schemes backfire and Ju-yeon faces losing everything does she finally begin to realise how she’s taken the people in her life for granted. What emerges is a new kind of family in which good friends enjoy food together because they want to eat rather than because someone insisted on cooking. Taking in everything from the ageist sexism of the entertainment industry to teenage pregnancy and neglected children, Kim Tae-gon’s Familyhood is a smart, socially conscious comedy making a heartfelt plea for a more understanding world.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)