A Boy Named Soo

I received an email about a week ago from a reader who asked, "Why don't you write about Korean films anymore? Are they 'so 2006', or have you just set your sites on teh [sic] next hip country whose films dominate the chatter at your fancy New York dinner parties?" Snarky comment notwithstanding, it is true that there has been a dearth of Korean film coverage of late, yet it has nothing to do with a loss of interest; the simple fact is that many of the Korean films I've seen this year have been less than inspiring, to say the least. The Korean film industry is in a bit of a slowdown this year – with only 48 feature films having been released thus far (source: KOFIC), it's unlikely that the industry will come close to matching the 108 titles released in 2006. After the phenomenal success of both King and the Clown and The Host, studios are striving to come up with the next big thing, and as a result it's become increasingly more difficult to find funding for titles that aren't high-concept. In an attempt to increase ticket sales, several films this year tried to blend genres, which perhaps explains the wacky time-traveling RomCom Project Makeover, or the extremely poor Miracle on 1st Street which combines the RomCom with the female boxing movie. Yawn. Many of the 2007 titles have been instantly forgettable, and I've not been interested in writing about third-rate melodramas (Herb), not-terribly-funny comedies (Highway Star), and lousy sequels (Mapado 2). But then along came Soo. Born and raised in Nagano, Korean director Yoichi Sai (whose disappointing Blood and Bones I wrote about not long ago) had, until now, never made a film outside of Japan. Soo, his first film produced and shot in Korea is a fascinating, noirish take on the vengeance film, a genre not uncommon in contemporary Korean cinema. Ji Jin-hee (Bewitching Attraction, The Old Garden) stars as the Tae-soo, a hitman who has spent the last nineteen years searching for his identical twin brother, Tae-jin (also played by Ji), after the two were separated as children owing to an unfortunate encounter with a gangster. A near-reunion is the catalyst for a series of events that soon escalates into a complex, multi-layered tale of deception and revenge. Soo firmly roots itself as a film noir from its opening scene, which finds anti-hero Tae-soo driving through the empty night streets of Seoul, set to a Travis Bickle-like first-person voiceover. With its hard-boiled dialog, lack of sentimentality, and a handful of shady characters on the sidelines (including a blind junkie accordionist, and a knife-wielding pre-teen), there's hardly a noir trope that Sai doesn't employ. At the same time, he strips down the vengeance theme to its unrelentingly raw essentials, leaving no room for moral/ethical dilemma or discussion. Sai treats vengeance as a purely instinctual drive, on par with hunger or thirst. While there's much about Soo that feels vaguely familiar (there are thematic parallels to Infernal Affairs), there's enough originality in both its narrative approach and its aesthetics to prevent it from slipping into the conventional. Still, Sai wears his influences on his sleeve, and there are obvious nods to Scorsese, De Palma and even Leone, particularly in its Morricone-esque score which bears more than a passing resemblance to Deborah's Theme from Once Upon a Time in America. As with Blood and Bones, there's an overwhelming, almost clinical fascination with the human body, and the amount of beating, stabbing and shooting it can withstand before finally succumbing and admitting defeat, particularly when one is driven by a self-righteous cause. Soo is extremely violent, though unlike the highly stylized set pieces is Oldboy or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Sai's camera doesn't turn away from the more gruesome aspects. The extended bullet and knife ballet that closes out the film would make Peckinpah proud. In his well renowned trilogy, Park Chan-wook studied the causality behind acts of vengeance, be it social, political, or personal. In Soo, Sai treats vengeance as purely instinctual; a human drive on par with hunger or thirst. He's not trying to evoke sympathy for Tae-soo, nor is he sitting in judgment of his character's motivations and actions. Soo's cold, distant approach will no doubt be off-putting to some, and while it doesn't quite hit all its high notes, it remains one of the most original genre films to come out of Korea this year.

Comments

[Eight Rooks]

Damn, you liked this? There's a surprise. I wanted to love it - yet I don't think it was unrealistic expectations that had me feeling it was one of the worst films I'd seen so far this year. It has its moments - the rough and tumble of the violence works sometimes (the tunnel setpiece was actually pretty good), and occasionally there's a brief flicker of melancholy chemistry between the male and female leads, but by and large I found this farcical in the extreme. Very little struck me as artistic about the finale at all, not even in the most grim and breathless way you could think of, and when I realised I'd pretty much been listening to nothing but deathly serious screaming and bellowing for fifteen, twenty minutes straight I couldn't help but start giggling. And then the operatic solo - an operatic solo over the carnage as every other sound fades into nothing, straight out of the Big Book Of Cliched Action Movie Tropes - I mean, Christ, I don't think even Michael Bay ever lowered himself to that one. Then again, I've never seen a single Peckinpah. Perhaps I'd hate his films too. :p

No, sorry, that really does surprise me. You and Darcy both; it just seemed so patently obviously like the sort of film every highbrow moral guardian thinks Oldboy is I felt sure half the blogs or sites I read would be tearing it to pieces. Oldboy is guilty of many things but even at my most cynically appraising I still cared about what happened to Choi; by the end of Soo I just desperately wanted the film over with. And A Bittersweet Life or even better, Rebirth (the TV series) just demolish this in every way possible, to my way of thinking.

Still, different strokes, and thank you for an alternate point of view. And sadly I agree with you on the current state of Korean cinema overall, I think. Bad as this was, Miracle on 1st Street practically had me in tears longing to turn the clock back four, five, six years or so. :(

[Sujewa]

Hey Mr. Filmbrain,

Come join us for a fancy indie film blogger party in NYC on Thu 8/23, starting around 9 PM, at Botanica, all the info. is here:

http://diyfilmmaker.blogspot.com/2007/08/iw-bloggers-nyc-meet-up-thu-823.html

OK, let me know if you have any Q's. Talk to ya soon, & perhaps see ya on Thu 8/23.

- Sujewa

[Noel Vera]

Highway Star was a chore, though the actress I thought was charming. Much prefer Seducing Mr. Perfect, which does Hollywood rom-com with more zip and conviction than can be found in Hollywood.

[Filmbrain]

Eight --

Much of what you said about Soo is exactly what I felt about A Bittersweet Life, which I really disliked.

I really think it's by design that we don't care or feel anything for Tae-soo, as opposed to Dae-su (hey, just realized how similar the names are) in Oldboy. Sai's habit of keeping a conscious distance from his characters can be frustrating -- that was one of my biggest problems with Blood and Bones -- but here, where it's not a family epic told over multiple decades, I think it works.

[Eight Rooks]

I did read your A Bittersweet Life review, Filmbrain . ;) One of the few times you've really had me grinding my teeth. I adore that film, and feel it's one of the most grievously under-rated or just plain mis-represented "Asia Xtreme" releases going. Still, I guess I can see how people could like Soo, just... not like it so much. Nothing about it ever quite seemed to work for me - you don't make a cartoon totally lacking in emotional distance, to my way of thinking. Nor do you leave out any kind of... focal point, any kind of device by which the hero's quest is grounded or held up to a mirror... there's neither anyone or any thing in Soo that gave me the feeling Sai was really that bothered about giving Tae-Soo any real resonance. The film had nothing to match Oldboy's climactic moments of "Oh dear God, what have I done?", Bittersweet Life's whole repeated theme of "Christ, my life is entirely worthless, isn't it?" or the episode in Rebirth in which the hero is asked if he really knows what he's doing and he has to acknowledge that yes, his lust for revenge is probably going to destroy him and definitely going to hurt people he cares about but he's going to carry on regardless. Soo has one final a-man's-gotta-do conversation between the two leads which came across as played more for histrionics than anything else - there was never any sense these were real people or that their actions related to the real world in any meaningful way.

I can credit how someone could see the film as purposefully distant or withholding judgement, but I'd still argue for the film-maker horribly mishandling such an approach, their reading too much into said mishandling, or both. :p

Still, again, it did have its moments. I will admit my disdain for it is in large part frustration at how much better I think it could have been, and hey - it's infinitely preferable to second-string melodramatic nonsense like Holiday or vacuous failures like Running Wild (just the first two titles that spring to mind).

[G. Kenny]

I really enjoy the tone of your e-mailer. "Hey scumbag, why don't you write about films I want to read about anymore. Please get back to doing that. By the way, I hold you and the lifestyle I imagine you have in complete contempt. XOXOXO"
Also, what is it with this "fancy dinner party" nonsense? Jeez, Brain, the last dinner I remember you and I having together, for instance, was cold pizza in a courtyard near a sump-like canal. Quelle elegance! What the hell is WRONG with people, anyway?....

[Rahat]

I'm a bit surprised as well that you liked this as much as you did. Honestly, the first time I tried to watch it, I was both annoyed and bored by the silliness of the plot and the formulated emotions. I do believe it had many of the components necessary to be successful (especially the coldness), but the follow-through was considerably subpar vs. A Bittersweet Life.

[jake]

I personally enjoyed Soo very much. The score was wonderfully moody and I liked how it kept everything personal. We don't have the entire nation looking for Soo and even the enemy is little known to the public. Everything seems hidden, almost self conscious of being out of place in the society. This for me made the entire revenge more personal. There's no glory, just one last thing Soo can do for his brother. If "A Bittersweet Life" was about a man acting out his true feelings, "Soo" seems to be about a cold killer discovering his fears. Aside from the action scene in the introduction, Soo doesn't seem like a cold killer, but a man who must survive in order to take his revenge.