Kwon Sang-woo – Windows on Worlds

An egotistical actor is given an unexpected lesson in what it is that makes life worth living when he’s suddenly transported to a parallel world in Ma Dae-yun’s charming Christmas dramedy, Switch (스위치). Rather than the body swap comedy the title might suggest, Ma’s warmhearted morality tale is a more a meditation on what might have been and may be again while contemplating the emptiness of a life of fame and riches when there’s no one to share it with.

“What matters more than money?” top star Park Kang (Kwon Sang-Woo) chuckles after telling his manager he’ll accept a job he just described in quite insulting terms after being informed it comes with a hefty paycheque. Kang is currently riding high. He’s become enormously successful and even a recent sex scandal involving his co-star in a TV drama has only boosted his profile. Yet he tells his analyst that he can’t sleep and attributes it to “depression and anxiety”. He treats those around him poorly and most particularly his long suffering best friend from his fringe theatre days, Joe Yoon (Oh Jung-Se) who now works as his manager, while struggling to accept his loneliness and meditating on lost love in the memory of the woman he broke up with in order to chase stardom.

After getting into a weird taxi one Christmas Eve, he’s suddenly granted the “wish” of getting to find out what would have happened if he’d made a different choice. After waking up in an unfamiliar house he discovers that he’s married with two children and slumming it fringe theatre while Joe Yoon is now the superstar having aced the audition Kang ran out on to chase Soo-hyun (Lee Min-Jung) to the airport and convince her not to leave. Of course, Kang is originally quite unhappy about all of this. He doesn’t understand why no one recognises him anymore and resents that he’s suddenly subject to the rules of “ordinary” people again after a decade as a pampered star. In his acceptance speech after winning an award, he’d stated his intention to “forget” his roots as a humble actor and embrace his new role as a member of the showbiz elite fully demonstrating his sense of alienation and insecurity along with his intense loneliness. As the taxi driver had said, Kang has “everything”. He’s achieved his dreams and lives the high life he’d always dreamed of, yet he’s deeply unhappy.

But his “new” life immediately challenges his sense of masculinity in realising that he has little power without money and is in fact financially dependent on Soo-hyun whom he may also have robbed of a bright future by preventing her from studying abroad and achieving success as an artist. Meanwhile he looks down on himself for continuing to follow his artistic dreams in fringe theatre when his plays attract few audiences members and make little money. Just as Joe Yoon had become his manager, so he ends up getting a taste of what it’s like trying to manage a “star” while coming to appreciate that Joe Yoon may be feeling just as lonely and unfulfilled as he once had.

Yet even as Kang settles into his new life as a husband and father while slowly rebuilding his acting career though a combination of talent, supportive friendship, and good luck, he fails to learn the right lessons continuing to yearn for external validation through material success. He spends money on fancy dinners and tries to move the family into a swanky apartment in Seoul without realising that he’s already got a “home” in the quaint little provincial house he and Soo-hyun set up together filled with memories (that admittedly he doesn’t actually have) of the children when they were small. Slowly, he begins to look beyond himself while developing a new sense of security that means he doesn’t need to chase status-based affirmation in empty materialism but now has a new sense of what’s really important. A charming season morality tale with a little more than a hint of A Christmas Carol, Ma’s gentle drama never suggests that success itself is wrong or that Kang must give up his movie star persona to become a happy everyman but only insists that true happiness is brokered by treating others well and being treated well in return much more than it is by consumerist success.

Switch screens at UltraStar Cinemas Mission Valley April 22/24 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Heroic bloodshed meets corruption drama in the retro debut feature from Kim Sung-soo (b. 1971 – not to be confused with the director of Beat/Asura), Running Wild (야수, Yasu). Over the top macho action mingles with saccharine family drama as two seemingly very different law enforcement officials realise they aren’t that different after all as their relentless pursuit of a mob boss turned “legitimate businessman” with political aspirations becomes increasingly intense. Filled with typically 70s touches from split screens to zooms and descents into ridiculous displays of male aggression set against the pounding rhythms of an action score, Running Wild is a story of the law on fire but one which never quite knows which side it’s on.

Straight-laced prosecutor Oh (Yoo Ji-tae) has been slumming it in the boonies for the last few years after his attempt to bring down top gangster Yoo Kang-jin (Son Byong-ho) was derailed because of the dirt Yoo has on a selection of important people. Stopping only to take out a local big wig mobster, Oh is finally on his way back to Seoul with settling scores firmly on his mind. Meanwhile, maverick cop Jang (Kwon Sang-woo) collects his younger half-brother from jail and takes him to see their seriously ill mother in hospital. While Jang is busy meticulously filling in a lottery ticket, Dong-jik (Lee Joong-moon) is knifed by his old buddies and so Jang now has his own score to settle with the Dokang family.

Eventually teaming up to take down their common enemy, Jang and Oh have very different approaches to law enforcement. Oh hates the likes of Yoo because they break the social order while Yoo is a bully who profits from the suffering of others and laughs at the likes of Oh while he does it. Oh believes in the supremacy of the law, that the law is his greatest weapon and the one unassailable force that even men like Yoo will eventually have to submit to. Yoo feels differently. For Yoo the law is an irrelevance or even a symbol of other men’s naivety; he will overcome it and live outside of its control.

While Oh pins his hopes on the proper operation of the law, Jang pins his on his fists. Flailing wildly, Jang is more thug than cop – urging Oh to abandon his ridiculous righteousness and do what it takes to take the bad guys down even if that means planting evidence and beating information out of suspects. He is a classic angry man, frustrated by his powerlessness in the face of his mother’s illness and his inability to protect his makeshift family. Blaming himself for Dong-jik’s death and for failing to prevent his flirtation with criminality, Jang spars with his step-sister, half rejecting her role as primary care-giver to the mother he can’t save and part longing to see her as a true and permanent member of the family which constantly eludes him.

Family becomes a recurrent theme as both Jang and Oh ruin their respective relationships through their unconventional working lives. Despite finally getting back to Seoul, Oh’s wife plans to leave the husband whose obsession with his work, or more particularly his vendetta with Yoo, has consumed him while Jang’s family life remains a total mess. Yoo, by contrast, now a legitimised CEO playing golf with the rich and famous, enjoys lovely family meals with his elegantly dressed wife and cute little children who seem to adore him.

The law, it seems, is not robust enough to withstand the finagling of the corrupt criminal class who ride the waves of their power and influence all the way to the top. Oh steps further towards the edges of his noble goal, at which point he has to admit his quest is also one of personal revenge more than of truth or justice. Both men ruin themselves in stupid acts of self destruction, turning themselves into grenades thrown against a regime content to protect its inherent injustices. Running Wild, the pair fight fire with fire but also become victims of the system which oppresses them. Kim piles on the retro style but lets the old fashioned heroics run away from him abetted by the bombastic Kenji Kawai score. Nevertheless, Running Wild is a stylish enough calling card even if its aesthetics trump its sincerity.

Currently streaming on Netflix UK (and possibly other territories)

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Tag: Kwon Sang-woo

Switch (스위치, Ma Dae-yun, 2023)

Running Wild (야수, Kim Sung-soo, 2006)