Friend 2: The Legacy: Before and Before That but After That

Ready to get ever-so-slightly confused, my fellow Korean movie fan? Well, Friend 2: The Legacy picks up exactly 17 years after the action in the original Friend movie, even though only 13 years have actually passed since the first movie was shot. Why the discrepancy, I don't know. Furthermore, the movie isn't just a sequel (with some flashbacks to old footage we've already seen). It also flashes further back to an extended prequel that predates part one, as well to a kind of latter-day prequel with action that's post-Friend but pre-Friend 2. With all this jumping back and forth (if you're anything like me), you're going to question which is the primary storyline and whether you truly need to know so much ancestry about so many characters. I mean, The Godfather this is not. Plus there is no Old Country.

So what's supposed to be the focus here? Is it the current-day partnership between newly released con and mob heavy Lee Joon-seok (Yu Oh-seong) and fatherless, aspirational teen hood Choi Seong-hoon (Kim Woo-bin) OR is it the familial dramas of Choi and his posse of warrior wannabes OR is it the well-appointed mob history of someone's grandfather? I am frankly still unsure. The present-day ending doesn't resolve any of the stories so much as it positions the characters for a threequel during which it seems likely that the layering could expand to include a scifi future scenario examining the offspring of Lee, Choi and maybe the illegitimate offspring of a character killed off at some point in time. Please don't let these comments dissuade you from checking out Friends 2 if you've already seen its predecessor. Even with all the complications, auteur Kwak Kyung-taek's delivers some undeniable and simple pleasures -- one being the joy that comes with witnessing how much better an actor like Yu has gotten (which isn't to say he wasn't good before) and how much sexier he's gotten too; the other is getting to see a new, young talent like Kim glower in scene after scene with one of the best '50s style Elvis coifs to hit the screen in many a day. This movie has left me with a serious care of hair envy.

Mutt Boy: A Howl of Despair

Let's start with a scene near the end of Kwak Kyung-taek's despairingly watchable Mutt Boy. Specifically, the prison fight scene. The one involving Cheol-min (Jung Woo-sung) and his mortal enemy Jin-mook (Kim Jeong-tae) -- the same Jin-mook who had Cheol-min's pet German shepherd killed then fed to the school's soccer team when the two boys were in high school. That Jin-mook. That despicable, quite unlikable, sick and twisted jerk.

Paired together at last for the ultimate cage match, the eponymous "Mutt Boy" and the meanie strip down to their skivvies -- tighty whities for the hero; black panties for the baddie, of course -- and take to fisticuffs (while wearing, for some unfathomable reason, gags). Free to fight without interruption, they punch mercilessly and without strategy. They don't block. They don't dodge. They just punch and punch and punch. And then when they're done with punching, they wrestle. And then they roll around and grapple and neck lock, all while wearing their symbolic undies.

The fellow prisoners are excited at first, then they grow weary because the fight goes on so long, and then some get excited again when it's over, even if it doesn't feel like an outright victory. The same can be said about Cheol-min's relationship with his adopted sister and love interest Jeong-ae (Uhm Ji-won). They fight. They wear each other out. He kind of wins but it doesn't feel like a victory. Same for his relationship with his chief of police dad (Kim Kap-su). Fight. Win. Non-victory. Same with the movie. It wears you down, wins you over, but you don't leave feeling good that about it. But you have to admit that it won. Ding. Ding. Ding.

If they handed out awards for weirdest performance, then for the year of 2003, Jung would definitely get it here for playing the slack-jawed, shat-upon dimwit who against all odds gets to helm his own gang and win over the ladies. His isn't a Cinderella story though. He was made to be miserable. He's got love, family, friends, a job, a roof over his head, looks, a wicked right hook, and potentially a new dog at the end but I wouldn't trade places with him for the world.

Friend: The Odds are Four to One Against You, Kiddo

At first you might puzzle over the singularity within this movie's title. Why Friend instead of Friends? After all, this pic is about a quartet of boys whom we watch mature from adolescence to adulthood. But as the cinematic years (and the real-time minutes) roll by, you realize there's only one relationship that counts to writer-director Kwak Kyung-taek: The one between Sang-taek (Seo Tae-hwa), a cowardly nerd who goes on to earn his PhD, and Jeong-suk (Yu Oh-seong), the son-of-a-thug who becomes a thug himself. The other two pals -- Dong-su (Jang Dong-gun) and Jeong-ho (Jeong Un-taek) -- are there for local color. At least in theory. The catch is that the camera adores Yu, who practically makes the screen burn, and doesn't care about Seo, who fades into the background, like a set piece. For all I know that could've been writer-director Kwak Kyung-taek's intent. Since the film is semi-autobiographical, maybe he finds the more conventional middle-class life less thrilling than the dangerous and violent world of Jeong-suk and his sidekick Dong-su, the undertaker's son who ends up a formidable gangster himself.

The life of crime has more action, whether it's fighting with a crowd of high school kids while using anything within reach as your weapon, or giving a knifing master class that addresses both tools and methodology. Blood spills in movie theaters, back rooms, restaurants, karaoke clubs, and rainy streets. But the cruel impact of the mob's dog-eat-dog ethic is ancillary here as the fragile kinship between Jeong-suk and Dong-su ultimately says more about Jeong-suk's friendship with Sang-taek than anything else. Which isn't a bad thing. There's a certain satisfaction that comes with Dong-su getting repeatedly dismissed, belittled and humbled then watching him rise in power in Busan's ruthless underworld where he ends up Jeong-suk's rival. I was particularly taken with how Jeong-suk holds on to the past and wants to minimize their rivalry while Dong-su seems to embrace it, to heighten the tension. Old grudges die hard for those who get the short end of the stick -- which can be used to knife you.

Eye for an Eye: Revenge Without Vision

Han Suk-kyu! Yeah, you! Come over here for a second. I want to talk to you. Now please don't take offense, but I was really frustrated with your acting in the abominable heist pic Eye for an Eye. To be blunt, your turn as Captain Baek Sung-chan really irritated the heck out of me. I know the movie's failure is not all your fault. The screenplay by co-directors Kwak Kyung-taek and Ahn Kwon-tae is full of holes. No one would believe that the cop you play would go so that easy on Ahn Hyon-min (Cha Seung-won), the goateed guy who frames him for grand larceny when he just wants to retire and become a pest exterminator. Nor would anyone believe that your character Baek could so consistently predict his foil's next step then just as consistently be tricked for the step thereafter. They certainly aren't going to believe that he's going to put that much stock in any leads provided by Antonio (Lee Byung-joon), the weird-toothed transvestite with whom he's been acquainted for years. Yes, Cha, even if your performance had been brilliant, Eye for an Eye would have been a dud, a second-rate thriller unlikely to make a top ten list covering your career.

But couldn't you have at least made it better? You've been in so many movies that I've really liked -- The President's Last Bang, The Scarlet Letter, Tell Me Something... And you've been good in movies I've had mixed feelings about too -- Green Fish, A Bloody Aria... You certainly didn't make any of those movies worse! But here... Oh, Cha, what are you doing? That high-pitched laugh you keep doing to relate the mad, crazy ridiculousness of it all in Eye for an Eye is both forced and grating. The smug self-satisfied way you have of lighting a cigarette or popping a piece of chewing gum in your mouth isn't as cool as you seem to think it is. Far from it. I hate to say it, my friend, but in this flick, you come across as a poseur, not an actor. There's so much that feels fraudulent in your performance that I've even begun to doubt whether your now-gray hair is prematurely so or whether you've had it dyed that way. Oh Cha, when you're good, you're quite good but here you're quite bad. It almost makes me re-evaluate everything you've ever done. But why do that? I thank you for your other movies. And I forgive you for this one.

On second thought, I might be totally wrong. Because you're still the most memorable part of the movie. It seems unlikely I'll forget that laugh or that affected bravado or that silver hair. I give up. You win, Han Suk-kyu.

Typhoon: There's a Storm Brewing for the South

There are whole dialogues in Typhoon that are in English (and Russian too) but that doesn't make it any easier to understand. Something's going on involving modern-day piracy, nuclear terrorism, and a North Korean family's amnesty request being denied but how these elements all fit together is a mystery...at least, at first. Later, a childhood flashback makes everything crystal clear. That's too bad. This melodramatic thriller is much better when it's being frustratingly confusing than when it's being overly simplistic. Not that it's ever very good. While its visual shorthand can be charming -- the villain (Jang Dong-kun) has messy, rock-n-roll hair and a leather jacket; the bland hero (Lee Jung-jae) sports a crewcut and white Oxford shirts -- the cinematic bombast promised by its 15 million dollar budget, a record high in South Korea when it was produced, never arrives. From the looks of it, auteur Kwak Kyung-taek would've done well to hire an outside screenwriter and put a toy boat in a bathtub for the climactic battle scene which simulates a major storm to minor effect. Maybe some of the funds went to getting top-shelf heroin and morphine for scenes involving the terrorist's druggie-prostitute sister (Lee Mi-youn). Lucky her, eh?

Champion: The Man Who Wears Gloves

If you've ever seen a championship boxing match, then you know that while the lightweights certainly can't beat the heavyweights, they're nevertheless a hell of a lot scrappier, tougher, even scarier since they haven't got an ounce of fat to cushion any of the furiously thrown blows. Champion, Kwak Kyung-taek's biopic on South Korea's world-class contender Kim Deuk-gu, doesn't tell one fighter's rags to riches story, or traffic in his poetic inarticulacies of rage, though it could have done either given its subject matter. Instead, the flick relates the ascent of a fairly likable, none-too-bright pugilist who seems motivated by cultural imperatives and grounded by the respect that accompanies accomplishments which garner you a big fat wreath and a bloody nose. It's hard to tell whether actor Yu Oh-seong is doing a bad job or a solid one as he represents a man with little depth, not much smarts, and a boy's undeveloped philosophies. There's a lot of blank stares and looks of incomprehension. That might be the brutal truth. Ultimately, he's easy on the eyes and his tightie whities are always spotless. While the actual matches could've gone on much longer, his flashbacks are kept to a minimum. Kindly so.