Tag: Kim Dae-gon

The Beast (비스트, Lee Jung-ho, 2019)

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Internal police politics frustrate the hunt for a potential serial killer in Lee Jung-ho’s dark social thriller, The Beast (비스트) inspired by Oliver Marchal’s 36 Quai des Orfèvres. As a pathologist suggests, we all may have a hidden beast and it’s certainly true of the film’s conflicted protagonist, thuggish policeman Inspector Jung (Lee Sung-Min) who finds himself dragged ever deeper into a mire of corruption as a natural result of a series of bad decisions that started long ago, while his rival, Captain Han (Yoo Jae-Myung), presents the facade of efficient modern policing but inevitably turns out to be little better. 

As the film opens, Jung and his subordinate Yang are each wearing balaclavas while driving a heavily tattooed man out into the middle of nowhere though only for the purposes of frightening him so that he’ll back off their informant, local bar owner Madame Oh (Kim Ho-jung). Jung’s inner conflict is palpable as stares at his bloodied, shaking hands asking himself how it is it’s come to this while Yang later reminds him not to become too attached to his sources because once they’ve exceeded their usefulness they’ll simply be arrested. While all of this is going on, the police force is under immense pressure and receiving a lot of negative press over their handling of the case of a missing teenage girl, Mi-jin. Unfortunately, the girl later turns up dead with the murder enquiry split between two teams, those of Jung and Han each of whom are in the running to take over from the superintendent who before all of this happened was about to be promoted which is why he is desperate to solve the case as soon as possible. 

It might at first be tempting to read Jung and Han as representatives of different kinds of policing with their rivalry representing a battle for the soul of the police force only as it turns out each is merely corrupt in their own way. Jung is very much of the jaded veteran cop school, wanting to shift the case off his books as soon as possible by pushing the most likely suspect to confess. In this case that’s a shady pastor at a church Mi-jin used to frequent who was found in possession of her underwear and a series of photos of very young girls. Jung pushes the pastor to “confess” by selling him a story that a woman he was accused of assaulting in university took her own life as did her mother while her father later developed cancer as a result of all the stress and tragedy. Of course the pastor breaks down insisting that he killed her and it’s all his fault, only he’s talking about the other girl not that Jung cares too much about that. Han meanwhile quickly exonerates him by doing actual investigating, but only really so that he’ll still be in the running to solve the case and get the big promotion thereby besting his former partner turned rival. Jung had been the first to mention the possibility of an active serial killer only to be shut down because that would mean they’d lose the case to Major Crimes and therefore the personal opportunities for career advancement solving it would present. 

Both men eventually end up at the showdown by each of their respective routes implying there’s little practical difference between them. Han jeers that he can’t tell anymore if Jung is a bad guy or a cop but all he can answer is that it might be a matter of perspective, while he is also aware of Han’s backdoor deals and willingness to compromise himself in order to win advancement. In the midst of all this jockeying for power, it gets forgotten that a young woman lost her life in the most heinous of ways while whoever really did it may still be out there looking for the next girl to torture and kill. Everyone may indeed have a beast inside them, Jung already acquainted with his in his morally compromised soul while Han battles his internal ambition but the real beast may be the contemporary city and the infinitely corrupt hierarchies of the modern Korea along with the toxic masculinity that forces these men to betray their ideals simply not to be accounted a failure trapped at the bottom of the pyramid by their own problematic righteousness. When they’ve served their usefulness, the system chews them up and spits them out but until then it’s only hanging on as long as they can in the utter futility of a morally bankrupt existence. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Tune in for Love (유열의 음악앨범, Jung Ji-woo, 2019)

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Tune in for love poster 2The course of true love never did run smooth. Another in the recent series of nostalgic ‘90s romances, Tune in for Love (유열의 음악앨범, Yooyeolui Eumakaelbum) takes a pair of nervous youngsters and charts the course of their love story over a decade which, though not quite turbulent, saw its share of difficulties and a host of technological changes. “Miracles are nothing special” the heroine tells us, but when it comes to love miracles are all there is and in the end you’ll just have to learn to trust them.

On Oct. 1, 1994 Hyeon-u (Jung Hae-in) walks into Mi-su’s (Kim Go-eun) bakery looking for something with tofu in it. While inside, he hears the first broadcast of Yoo Yeol’s Music Album, a new morning program which seems to signal the beginning of a new era. Though Mi-su is quick to realise that the only reason someone would be desperately looking for plain tofu early in the morning is because they’ve just been released from prison, she decides to offer him a part-time job in the bakery where he becomes a member of the family alongside her “aunt” Eun-ja (Kim Guk-Hee) who’s taken care of her since her mother died. His past, however, refuses to let him go however much he tries to move away from it. Tracked down by his delinquent friends, Hyeon-u is unable to return to the bakery and will spend the next decade trying to do just that.

Fate parts the youngsters repeatedly, but always brings them back together again seemingly by chance. Military service, changes of address, miscommunication and changing technology all conspire to keep them apart but like any good rom-com the problems aren’t so much circumstantial as personal. A deeply wounded young man, Hyeon-u is taken with the familial atmosphere at the bakery because he feels a sense of acceptance he hasn’t anywhere else, but deep down he still doubts he deserves the “normal life” he so deeply craves. His friends doubt it too, always turning up unexpectedly to remind him of their shared trauma and the debt of guilt he can’t repay. His insecurity prevents him from sharing the source of his pain with Mi-su, keeping her somehow outside the bubble of his shame as the only one capable of knowing the “real” him. She meanwhile is frustrated in realising that he’s holding something back, hurt he doesn’t trust her enough to let him in, and worrying he’ll never truly be ready for full commitment. 

Nevertheless, though often apart they remain painfully in sync, until that is fate brings them back together. As young man with a checkered past and no safety net, Hyeon-u has to fight twice as hard to get ahead, eventually graduating high school and getting into college while supporting himself with part-time jobs. Mi-su, meanwhile, is burdened by the knowledge that she’s lost her mother’s bakery and is desperate to get it back. Dreaming of being a writer, she turns down an internship at the all important radio show to go for a steady job she’s told is at a publisher’s but is actually somewhere more like a print shop where she’s stuck doing incredibly boring admin work. Hyeon-u is unable to get back in touch with her after miraculously reappearing because he’s ashamed to admit that he ended up getting in trouble again thanks to his awful friends even though it really wasn’t his fault. She meanwhile confesses that a part of her was relieved not to hear from him because she too is unhappy in herself, feeling lost and confused, disappointed not to be living the kind of life she could be proud of. 

Times change, but their one constant is the radio show broadcasting every morning and providing additional though indirect methods of communication when they are otherwise unable to make contact. Pay phones give way to email and then to mobiles all the way into the early days of the smartphone era, but face to face conversation remains the most difficult. Mi-su gives up on Hyeon-u while he, ironically, probably does sort something out by having a good old fashioned punch up with his generally unhelpful friend. She wonders if she’s better off to make the “smart” choice rather than waiting on love. Hyeon-u is hurt that in the end she didn’t trust him, but is eventually made realise that the problem was that he didn’t trust himself. Then again, you can’t fight the power of true connection or the pain of its absence, all you need to do is a little fine tuning to make sure the signal comes through loud and clear.

Currently available to stream online via Netflix in the UK (and possibly other territories)

Netflix trailer (English subtitles)