Happy End: Daddy Needs a Life More Than a Job

When actor Choi Min-sik is good, he's very, very good (Oldboy, Crying Fist, I Saw the Devil). But when he's bad, he's actually pretty bad. Happy End may show Choi at his worst. Playing a blubbering househusband unwilling to assume the household duties after he loses his job, and his wife (Jeon Do-yeon) becomes the family checkbook, Choi's Seo Min-ki is the embodiment of male prerogative. He believes, he has every right to spend his days reading romances at the local bookstore then jabbering about a soap opera with a lady neighbor all night long on the phone, even when the baby's crying, the kettle's boiling and his wife's catching up on paperwork. He doesn't care if the Mrs. is overextended. He's too busy feeling sorry for himself.

You can imagine Mr. Sulky-pants is going to get a lot sulkier when he learns that his wife isn't just clocking extra hours at the job. She's also working off some stress in the bed of a former beau (Ju Jin-mo) who as she says herself, her nails digging into his back and butt, "You've got a fantastic body." (Or something like that.) She may be living a life of deception but truer words were never spoken. Plus, since this hottie is the director of the website where she works, we know the dude's got computer skills, too. Is divorce an irrational next step?

That's not the story that writer-director Jung Ji-woo has scripted, though. You see, Mrs. Seo is committed both to her marriage and getting banged. Even if that means doping her baby to go on a bender. Maybe that's what happens for the respectable bourgeoisie who hold family above all. But if respect is the be-all, end-all, then Mr. Seo is going to end-all to be-all in the end. The murderous plot he concocts to do this has registered with one viewer as completely implausible and unlikely to fool a trained detective. But said viewer wanted to see Mr. Seo put away for life for the crime of whining. Surely, there must be some country that outlaws self-pity.

New World: May the Best Buffoon Win

I know I've seen actor Hwang Jeong-min before. He plays a deadpan detective in The Unjust, a snooping insurance agent in Black House, and a doomed lover in You Are My Sunshine. He's always been good but I was totally unprepared for just how great he is in writer-director Park Hoon-jung's New World. Here, playing Jeong Cheong, one of four gangsters vying to be the next Godfather of Korea's largest crime syndicate, he gives a performance that's epic in scale. What's even more impressive is how sneakily he builds that performance, starting off as a stereotype -- an uneducated thug who favors knock-off designer wear and sports a Jheri curl -- and ending up the movie's most complex character. So don't dismiss him as comic relief. Soon enough, his character will develop an edge. Then alongside his peacock posturing, you'll discover a sadistic streak that suggests, though dimwitted, he's dangerous, too. But wait! Even that evaluation must get tossed aside as you come to realize that his buffoonery is a pose, that he's quite savvy to the political web in which he's ensnared. If he's not the spider, then the spider better beware.

But New World, sad to say, isn't Jeong Cheong's story. It's the story of one of the underworld's other rising stars, Lee Ja-sung (Lee Jung-jae) -- an undercover cop who's being asked to stay incognito for the rest of his life as a way to the police force informed until the end of time. It seems a bit much to ask but at least Section Chief Kang, the one asking him to act as "mole" forever, is played by Choi Min-sik who can make any plot device, no matter how preposterous, seem perfectly believable. When Kang outwits the other aspiring crime lord Jung-gu (Park Seong-woon), you believe it. When he quits smoking as a way to honor an unlucky direct report (Song Ji-hyo), you kind of believe that too. You can almost believe his final encounter with one of the movie's murderous hobos. Almost but not quite.

Crying Fist: Eyes Swollen With Blood and Tears

In your typical boxing movie, the glory of the big fight depends on the depth of your feelings for one of the contenders: You need to like one guy more than the other. It's the story of an underdog, or of a man seeking justice or demanding payback or earning respect. But Ryu Seung-wan's Crying Fist undermines all that. By building to a championship between rivals with equally tearjerking back stories, this unconventional sports flick leaves you uneasy about rooting for either opponent. Suddenly, both sides deserve your sympathy. Weird!

In one corner is Gang Tae-shik (Choi Min-sik), a former silver medalist who now, over 40, scrapes out a living by letting frustrated passersby beat him up in the street for a fee. Part performance artist, part washed-up local hero, he's a bit of a joke who, more seriously, is going blind from head traumas, even as his wife (Seo Hye-rin) is divorcing him, and his brother (Lim Won-hie) is fleecing him of every won.

In the other corner is Yoo Sang-hwan (Ryu Seung-beom), an emotionally retarded criminal with a devoted, doomed father and a dying, maybe demented, grandma. As sad stories go, he's Tae-shik's equal, especially when you consider that Tae-shik at least has an ongoing bromance with a cafe owner (Jeon Ho-jin) while all Sang-hwan's got is the mentorship of a prison boxing coach (Byeong Hie-bong), who admits all his boys-in-training are like sons to him. Sang-won is just his latest protege.

This all adds up to the climactic fight being discomforting instead of rousing since getting in either guy's corner means abandoning his foe. You almost wish, Ryoo hadn't let the parallel stories converge, that he'd ended with two fights in two weight classes, making each loss and/or victory more personal. Pitting them against each other seems illogical. And yet, it's also what makes this movie so uniquely strange and good.

While hardly a philosophical film, Crying Fist does raise questions beyond who should win... Like why is redemption by violence attractive? How can a natural inclination towards violence be transformed into something constructive? When does a focused application of violence become perverted? When, how and why does violence pay off? Does it ever? Which isn't to say Crying Fist is a cinematic essay on pugilism. It's an effective melodrama. You bring the crying, this movie will bring the fists.

I Saw the Devil: It's a Bittersweet Life That's More Bitter Than Before

I Saw the Devil is a high-octane thriller that's got something to teach if you can hear it over the accelerated beating of your heart. The lesson is this: A successful revenge is a Pyrrhic victory. When undercover agent Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun) decides to play cat-and-mouse with serial killer Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) who raped, murdered then dismembered Kim's wife (Oh San-ha) and many others, he has to deal with some casualties along the way. For each time he releases his prey only to stalk him again, some innocent bystander is likely to get hit, stabbed, or choked. (If you're really unlucky, you'll suffer all three.) Soo-hyeon also submerges himself in a heretofore unconsidered freaky-scary world where mass murderers crop up time and again as if a whole underground network of interconnected sociopaths existed just below society's surface. (David Lynch would have a field day with an American remake!) So while, Soo-hyeon's got high connections within the police force — his father-in-law is Squad Chief Jang (Jeon Gook-hwan), he's going to need to draw on more than those resources to beat Kyung-chul at his own game. You see, Kyung-chul's got powerful allies too, especially one old buddy — a good-natured cannibal (Choi Moo-seong), with a violent girlfriend (Kim In-seo) — who enlightens Kyung-chul over dinner re: Soo-hyeon's "hunter" mindset. This mealtime revelation allows Kyung-chul to turn the tables at least for awhile.

Both Kim and Choi turn in hypnotic performances: Kim as per usual takes a minimalist approach, executing tasks as a form of acting then showing flashes of deep emotion at crucial points like when he's leaving the mausoleum where his wife's just been entombed; Choi chooses a flashier approach, giggling tauntingly and staring furiously at anything that gets in his way. It's a nice balance. Kim grounds the film; Choi embellishes it. I've seen a number of Kim Jee-woon's movies before (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Quiet Family). I Saw the Devil definitely showcases what this director does best: an extended chase scene that's punctuated by artful depictions of violence filled with horror; an adrenaline-releasing thriller fueled by one believably psychotic personality. I'm thinking particularly of A Bittersweet Life which also features Kim as a nearly-invincible-and-unquestionably-wronged man trying to survive amid an army of fists, knives, and guns. I was a big fan of that earlier effort and I'm a big fan of this one too.

Oldboy: Revenge Is Sweet, Repeatedly

I'd always been afraid to watch Oldboy a second time because I loved it so much the first. This movie, along with Save the Green Planet, is why I'm the longstanding fan of Korean film that I am. I didn't want to mess with that memory. I didn't want to rob Oldboy of its stature. In a nutshell, I was secretly worried that knowing the "shocking ending" beforehand would diminish the pleasures ahead. Would it end up feeling like a gimmick flick? Not to fear. Park Chan-wook's revenge masterpiece works equally well when you're clued in to the horrific plot twists. It's still creepy, lyrical, and deranged but now it's also deterministic. That main guy is doomed! Choi Min-sik gives what's likely the performance of his career as a man who, imprisoned 15 years for crimes unknown, is driven crazy by his need to discover why he was captured and confined. He's more than ably supported by Kang Hye-jeong as a blameless femme fatale and Yu Ji-tae as his pretty boy nemesis. The whole spiral downward is stunningly shot, paced, and performed. And does anyone not like perfection simply because they know where it's going? Not me. If an ending's any good, it's good whether you know it's coming or not. The spoiler is a term reserved for second-rate films.