Best of Korean 2003 movies

Save The Green Planet (KOREA 2003)

Director / Writer : Jang Jun-Hwan
Cast : Shin Ha-Kyun, Paek Yun-Sik, Hwang Jeong-Min, Lee Jae-Young, Lee Joo-Hyun

Synopsis
Byung-Gu explains to his girlfriend Sooni that aliens live on planet earth and are responsible for all the problems on the planet. Byung concludes that the wealthy and successful businessman Kang Man-Shik is a top alien and so he and Sooni kidnap the man in the hope that he will allow them to speak to the Alien Prince of Andromeda. When Man-Shik responds with confusion at his being kidnapped and doesn’t tell them what they want to hear, Byung-Gu is already prepared. To save the planet he will torture the truth out of the man…

Review
by Martin Cleary

For some reason I thought that Save The Green Planet was a ‘crazy’ comedy. The film’s colourful posters and adverts all depict Shin Ha-Kyun smiling like a moron. Even looking at the dvd case I was still expecting something possibly Stephen Chow-like. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Green Planet is partly a comedy – and yes, it has some brilliantly funny scenes – but it’s also quite nasty. Think Reservoir Dogs meets Men In Black and that’s still only part-way to describing this amazing film from South Korea.

We know from the outset of STGP that Kang Man-Shik isn’t a very nice character. He’s a wealthy businessman who refuses to pay the driver the whole cost of the trip home, and he’s very drunk and leery. Then, Byung-Gu and his girlfriend Sooni turn up wearing ridiculous costumes and accuse him of being an alien from the planet Andromeda. We’re fairly convinced that Byung-Gu’s got a screw loose. The rich man seems to be an arse, not an alien. After a struggle, Byung-Gu and Sooni kidnap the man. All three of them arrive back at Byung-Gu’s house, where they strip Man-Shik down to his sparkly red boxer-shorts and shave his head (so he can’t call his alien friends for help through his hair). From here STGP slows down just for a
second, long enough for us to wonder just what the hell is going on here. To reveal anything that happens next would be unfair as the narrative spins of into all sorts of bizarre and brilliant angles. To call this off-beat is an understatement. What follows is part cop movie, part romance, part science fiction, part – well it’s hard to think of a film genre that isn’t in some way injected into the mix. There’s even a short martial arts fight scene! How the hell the director has managed to shoe-horn all of these elements in is beyond me. (A quick warning to anyone squeemish: one of the most surprising elements of the film is the violence – this film does get fairly nasty just when you’re not expecting it.)

As surprising as the film is, what is the biggest surprise is how well it all actually works together. You’re never quite sure who the victim is in the film, and there’s a strange attraction to all of the main characters. There’s no real un-likeable characters here, you like them all – which is unusual considering several of them perform some horrible torture and violence.I certainly wasn’t expecting it, but I was completely blown away by Save The Green Planet. The fact that this is a film from a first-time director is gob-smacking. With the majority of films you get to a point where you know roughly what will happen heading towards the end – I didn’t when I was watching this film. The film’s cast can not be praised highly enough – especially the two central performances from Shin Ha-Kyun and Paek Yun-Sik. Ha-Kyun takes that stupid grin from the film’s poster and turn’s it into a character of its own. In an amazing performance he manages to mix violence and anger with a genuine warmth and sympathy. The fact that Yun-Sik manages to match Ha-Kyun’s powerhouse performance is a sign of just how good this film is. As the tortured businessman he manages to convince that he is a complete and rounded character – yes he’s a bastard, but his sheer ‘hard-headedness’ is impressive. Also, worth a mention is Hwang Jeong-Min as the simple girlfriend Sooni. It’s a role which is tiny in size but she manages to make a large impact. Have I gushed on about this enough? I could keep going on about the cinematography, script and soundtrack all day – but I won’t.

I loved Save The Green Planet, it’s one of the most surprising films I’ve ever seen and although it won’t be to everyone’s taste (if you can’t stand violence then steer clear) it’s worth a look from anyone who likes something a bit different. If you do see it, you’ll never hear the song ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ in the same way again. See it!

Wishing Stairs (KOREA 2003)

Director : Jae-yeon Yun
Cast : Ji-hyo Song, Han-byeol Park, An Jo, Ji-Yeon Park and Su-a Hong

Synopsis
A staircase leading to the dormitory of a remote boarding school usually has 28 stairs, but every so often there appears to be 29. When someone steps on the mysterious extra stair, the horror begins.

Review
by Edward Tang

This is the second Korean horror flick I’ve seen in a row (Acacia was the first) and I must say that they should concentrate on something else. This film is supposedly the third in a trilogy of “Ghost films”, after seeing this it seems that I probably won’t be visiting the other two films.

You’d basically have “Wishing Stairs”, a film that struggles to make it out of the pack as something original and interesting. It’s got every typical cliche: weird people who go insane for no reason, moments that jump out and are suppose to make you jump as well (unsuccessful), and of course a plot that could have been written by a twelve year old who just happened to realize that “Hey, my parents do hate me.” I can’t see how anybody would enjoy this film because it doesn’t do anything that warrants half an emotion. THROUGHOUT this entire film, I was waiting for something to happen, just something that would at least keep my interest, sadly it never came and was probably getting high at the mini-mall over on Reseda. 

The story is like any horror story, it finds a happy situation and puts a twist on it as to effect the main characters and people around them. The location is an all girl’s school (I didn’t see any dudes, so I’ll assume this). Then we are introduced to the wishing stairs, which are simply stairs you climb and you wish for something when you reach the top. I should have noticed the crappy plot, but I didn’t and got sucked another made-for-money flicks that have nothing true to offer. Anyways, the story continues where this girl wants to become a champion ballet dancer, so she goes up the stairs and wishes for this. Obviously there has to be a horror element, so what happens is that her friend gets hurt, so she takes the reigns and becomes the champion or whatever. Her friend dies in some way, and this triggers another psycho chick who has been abusing the stairs for her own use (losing weight and whatever) and has some crush on the dead girl. So we go into typical mode, people go crazy and we have a bunch of overacting and crying until we reach the end, and everybody stands up and prays to God that the crap has been flushed. 

Okay, now the story might sound okay but the way it was shot made it seem long and uneventful. This one aspect hurts me the most, waiting for something to happen. This is the point of a horror film! MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN, but when they tried to attempt this simple task, it was basically something that has been overused or just plain annoying. But then again, this film really didn’t seem like a horror film because two-thirds of the film didn’t focus on this, only until we get to the final few minutes is this film did we see a concoctions of crazy images and a little bit of gore. It wasn’t a horror film, it was kind of a side story on how high school sucks and it takes a toll on the human spirit to not be able to fit in. But that aspect was not looked upon, rather they tried to scare the audience with worthless tactics and most of all scenes that look like they were directly stolen from other films. Anybody who has seen a good amount of horror flicks ever see when water turns into blood? Yeah you have and if you’ve been picking up Tartan’s fall release, you’ve seen enough of it. 

From the story we got into the neighborhood of typical crap. Typical Crap has a population of morons, from obsessive people who can’t fit into society toward people who are just scary to be scary. These characters aren’t anything special, they sit there and react to surroundings, we don’t care about them or they can’t warrant us to even care if they get stabbed to death or whatever. There’s an outcast girl, you know she is going to cause trouble, she’s a fat chick who gets picked on and so forth. You’ll see it coming that she’s going to stab the bully and see her smile and spout stupid phrases that only fictional crazy people would have the balls to say. If you can’t see what I’m saying, it’s simple: These characters aren’t unique or special, they are just a bunch of typical cliches who are just made to move the crappy plot along. And what’s with this image focus on these Korean horror flicks? I saw Acacia (crap) the other day and the focus was on a tree, this time it’s stairs. Literally, I think writers just look out their windows and proclaim, “I’ll write a half-assed screenplay about that!” 

The acting isn’t actually half bad. There were some good performances for the most part, everyone except the fat chick who just hammed (and ate the ham) it up for the screen. But aside from her shittiness, the cast acted well. Maybe that’s not saying much for a horror film but I don’t know what else to say. There are some good moments between the main characters that showcase some talent in the fact that they can read their lines and be convincing at the same time. But this film is the last one that this type of acting should be tried with because you could basically speak with no tongue and fit into the typical mold of the horror character: ATTRACTIVE WOMAN WHO RUNS AWAY WHEN THINGS GET SCARY!. Alas, I think that someone should get all of these filmmakers together and just watch some of the good ol’ classics and just blatantly steal from them. Why not? I’d prefer a copy of another film to one that tries to be itself while in the process of taking from other films. At least the former is honest about the theft of the obvious situations and bloody showers. 

So what in store for Asian horror? Is the fad done? There have been too many horror films that are just typical of the genre that are obviously rented for the fact that people want entertainment but this gets thrown to the ground because nobody has stepped up to pull out a good horror film. South Korea is probably the place to go for the kickass cinema these days but they still can’t improve on where the horror film is going, right down the f*cking drain. I respect Tartan Videos, because they’ve been releasing great copies of Korean flicks for the past few years added with some great special features, but why should they continue to pick up these waste of time films? If you chose money, you can sit back down because that’s the only positive of I could see out of this. The horror films still remain to be typical and worthless but we will continue to shell out the dollars to see them.

Well when it comes down to it, Wishing Stairs is just another film that should not have been made because it has nothing to offer to the movie fan. It’s a ripoff and just never gets anywhere special that could prove it to be unique in it’s respective genre. Okay, basically I’d avoid it unless you can’t live without crappy horror films that just continue to spew the same worthless images and bad overacting until the viewer is just annoyed in the process. Hopefully one day, someone will realize that these films suck and will make something that can cure my hatred for this genre. Until that happens, avoid this and check something else out that can at least give you a good time.

Memories of Murder (KOREA 2003)

Director : Joon-ho Bong
Cast :  Kang-ho Song, Sang-kyung Kim, Roe-ha Kim, Jae-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon, Seo-hie Ko and No-shik Park.

Synopsis :
South Korea in 1986 under the military dictatorship: Two rural cops and a special detective from the capital investigate a series of brutal rape murder. Their rude measures become more desperate with each new corpse found. Based on a true case.

Reviewby Edward Tang

Memories of Murder is very much different from this round of things, the killer is never seen and although he is a psycho, his killings are not only disgusting, but neat. There truly isn’t a corpse that is seen all sliced up and shit to gain shock value, they actually focus on the storytelling element. Even though there isn’t an “ending” to this noise, the “whodunit” factor always comes into play. Beautifully shot, from long fields to dark nights filled with blood and rain. A superb cast that includes some great performances, mostly from the likes of Kang-ho Song (JSA).

I’m not really sure of the history of such, but I’ll assume that most of it is true. As I saw this film, I had no idea that the killer was never found, which made it better for me (But the ending pissed me off) because the search was very entertaining. From each suspect, they all look like they could do it, but most of their knowledge came from the harsh tactics thrown out by the police officers. The whole town knew that these guys were torturing witnesses and making them confess to crimes they had nothing to do with. But I also enjoyed the duel nature, as one of the suspects does describe everything in detail, but is later thrown away because of little evidence. Eventually the cops realize he was there the night one of the girls was murdered, but in this instance, it’s too late. The suspect is destroyed by a train. I felt like it was a little punishment from a higher power, these guys beat the hell out of this guy and never came to this conclusion. Then there’s a scene where the killer jumps out of nowhere and takes down a girl, in probably the creepiest way possible. She’s a whistling a tune, and she stops to hear the tune whistled back at her. Nasty.

From each character on down, we are continuously thrown a different person whom committed the crime. We focus on these characters, from uncanny truths about each man. For instance, one of the suspects requests a song every rainy night. It just so happens that the killings happen every single time this song is played. That was pure genius in my opinion, because wouldn’t you think that would be a way that most serial killers are caught? But this is just another dead end, as they realize this certain suspect’s DNA doesn’t match. Even though we are void of a conclusion, the director shows his skill and makes it like we might just have one. Speaking of which, his style was clearly different from more famous serial killer movies. Joon-ho Bong, whom has made four films, clearly focuses on more storied aspects, such as the detective’s personal life and more instances where we are exploring the mostly idiotic tactics that the officers use.

There isn’t much of anything that is gory. The murder-rape scenes are quick and to the point, more of a fade-out when the guy is just about to start his business. And as you would have known, there isn’t any body that is horribly deformed or anything. The director counts on the story to take you in, rather than grossing you out to the pure idiocy that excites fans of this genre. The characters were also a mention, all of them had different elements to the hunt, where as one wouldn’t hesitate to beat the shit out of them, the other was more balanced and never really raised a finger. But as we went on, the characters seemed to be more like each other than anything, using different tactics then before and just becoming different people. The score is done excellently, it really captures the mood of such story.

Kang-ho Song is excellent as he is in most of the shit he is in. His emotional take with his odd approach to finding the truth is a great work. I must admit, this guy kind of seemed desperate, as he would basically drop kick a guy he thought was a rapist. But his character also is a human, which is shown from his various activities from his meetings with his wife. His character seems to be the basis of this film, and after it was all set and done, he just couldn’t take the life anymore and decided to move on with it. His partner from Seoul more or less stays in the background for most of the film, a pretty smart guy, but doesn’t say much. But his breakdown at the end of the film, which had him pointing a gun at one of the suspects, even though he knew that it wasn’t the guy, showed that the guy was plain fed up with everything. The performances for the most part made the film better, you had a good cast of characters, and I must praise all the men who played the suspects. All of them were creepy and you wouldn’t think twice if they were in-fact the killer.

Which leaves me with the final scenes. The second time I saw them, I liked them better. But the first time had me pissed off because I was expecting something to happen (notice my child-like need for some EXPLOSIONS). But I liked the way it ended, a little creepy just like the film. But just like most serial killers, the little girl described him as normal. The film ends with a nice shot of the landscape and we are taken in by the music once more. What was interesting about this film was the fact that the killer wasn’t caught. Surely you couldn’t do a serial killer film where the killer simply isn’t found? Well I have been proved wrong a few times and this is another.

“Memories of Murder” is a beautiful film, from the direction all the way to the believable performances. There’s even a tone at some humorous parts which I grabbed immediately. You can’t go wrong with this film, and hopefully as I did, you’ll find that it surpasses most serial killer flicks and falls into a category of it’s own. A film that still has me buzzing two hours after I watched it, can’t be missed by those who call themselves movie fans.