Moebius: The Family That Castrates Together...

The willfully shocking Kim Ki-duk, the Lars von Triers of Korea, is back with another ultra-violent, psychologically perverse art film, this one adding castration to his catalogue of deconstructed crimes: rape, murder, suicide, incest, etc. And it's not just one castration. There are actually a few -- the first being committed by a jealous woman (Lee Eun-woo) on her son (Seo Young-ju) after she is unable to execute the dirty deed on her husband (Jo Jae-hyeon) who is having an affair with a shopkeeper who resembles her (and is also played by Lee). If such an act of brutality feels outside the realm of reality, take note. Moebius doesn't occur in our world but takes place instead in some weird parallel universe where people never speak but merely grunt, moan and laugh. Language is confined to search results that come up when googling for something like "penile replacement" or "autoerotica." Sound ridiculous?

Well, some critics have label Moebius a black comedy. I for one didn't laugh once, though I winced repeatedly. For me, this film falls squarely in that half of Kim's work which strains credulity and hammers at its dubious points insistently and insanely. What distinguishes Moebius isn't its sliced-off penises but its wordlessness -- teens gang-raping the aforementioned shopkeeper, the married couple wrestling over a cell phone, some high school students ripping off the pants' of a schoolmate to get a giggle from viewing his stump -- all acts which would seem to necessitate the screaming of "No." But no. In a way, I left Moebius wondering why Kim allowed his actors any sounds at all.

And what is Moebius actually saying? That we're all animals -- more dogs, than apes, frankly? That masochism is our most reliable survival tool? That our culture has us trapped in an internecine cycle in which each generation attacks what follows and what comes before? There's plenty of meaning to extract from Moebius if you wish. You could also make a case for it being meaningless. I can see where some would love it and some would hate but I fall squarely in the middle on this one. Call it a love-hate relationship.

The Executioner: Die, Die, Die

12 years have passed since the last execution but the South Korean government has now decided to get some guys off death row in the most permanent way possible as a public relations tactic to show that the administration is indeed being tough on crime. Among those slated for the gallows? Three guys from a single prison: Seong-hwan (Kim Geon), a born-again old geezer who stabbed his wife and son to death decades ago; Yong-doo (Jo Seong-ha), a cheery serial killer who mutilated his female victims and still thinks killing is a giggle; and, from out of nowhere, an unnamed guy with no back story who naturally is the first to feel the noose around his neck when the hangings begin.

The Executioner isn't about the doomed criminals however. It's about the damaging psychological effects these sanctioned killings have on the prison guards, again three in particular: Jong-ho (Jo Jae-hyeon), a hardened 40-year-old who's job has become his unhappy life; Jae-kyeong (Yoon Kae-sang), the newbie who's about to get a lesson in institutionalized sadism; and Officer Kim (Park Im-hwan), a lifer who's best friend is the aforementioned senior slayer slated for his last meal. You can practically hear the executioners saying to themselves, like some self-deluded parent, "This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you." Seems a stretch.

Director Choi Jin-ho and screenwriter Kim Young-ok are unabashedly against the death penalty. It dehumanizes! It's imperfect! It's no better than the people who did the original crimes! But The Executioner isn't a particularly persuasive argument for life or longevity. You get the feeling that if the HR department here hired a tough but sensitive psychologist [maybe someone like Jae-kyeong's pregnant girlfriend Eun-joo (Cha Su-yeon)], these troubled guys would be able to deal with the mental repercussions that come with a having to knock people off for a living.

And I'm writing this as someone AGAINST the death penalty! Go figure.

Marine Boy: One Man Goes Underwater Just So Someone Can Get High

I'm trying to remember if it's ever actually specified, what kind of drug is being trafficked in Yoon Jong-seok's enjoyable crime pic Marine Boy. Is it heroin? Is it cocaine? I know it's a contentious white powder that has rival gangs and cops all vying for its possession but, for all I know, it could be talcum powder, a product which also strikes me as worth fighting for given the recent advent of cornstarch within the Johnson & Johnson empire. There is some mention early in the film of benzodiazepine, I believe, in relationship to the film's femme fatale Yuri (Park Si-hyeon), a nightclub singer who likes to croon in Paul McCartney's "No More Lonely Nights" in English and clock men with her surprisingly lethal purse. But since we never see anyone pop pills, shoot up or snort lines, Marine Boy almost feels like a stylish agit-prop piece against drugs filmed in a country where depicting drug use on the big screen is illegal.

And it's not the only vice under attack here either: Former swimming-champ-turned-drug-mule Chun-soo (Kim Kang-woo) never would've gotten involved with the backstabbing world of black market narcotics if he hadn't incurred a gambling debt by misreading an ace for a four in the mirrored surface of an opponent's lighter. Has he been framed? Can he escape? Is there anyone to trust among this den of thieves that surrounds him? Or is the only way out to shove a sausage full of the aforementioned but unspecified drug up his butt and then to swim underwater from one ship to another in the un-patrolled waters between Japan and Korea? Well, at least he looks good in a rubber wetsuit. Really good. And if he's fallen for Yuri, despite having seen her last boyfriend beaten to death by her surrogate father, frenemy and drug kingpin Kang (Jo Jae-hyeon) who also just happens to be the man pimping out Chun-soo's large intestine as a storage locker, maybe that's because he knows that if Yuri sees him often enough in that wetsuit, she'll double-cross anyone who stands between the two of them and their fantasy getaway on the island of Palau. Don't be jealous of two beautiful young people who end up shacking up on a picturesque beach front property with quick access to world-class surfing. Neither has enrolled in a 12-step program for gambling or drug addition yet.

Bad Guy: Pimp Makes College Girl a Pretty Woman

Screw Julia Roberts. Director Kim Ki-duk knows prostitution is a nasty job capable of leaving a stink worse than the garbage man's. How's it start? Well, you've been framed. You owe some man $10,000 because you found his wallet then tried to steal the cash but you got caught red-handed so you took out an illegal loan to avoid going to jail but it basically turned you into a whore. That's the deal. Now, at $50 a bang, you're going to need to service 200 customers to pay him back. And that's not accounting for overhead—the rent, the cut for your madam and three pimps, the cost of cotton-candy colored wigs and a couple of batik summer dresses. Now you're up to 400 or 500 customers. How to keep count? How did this start again? Does the college girl (Seo Won) hate the ruffian (Jo Jae-hyeon) who trapped her into tricking or does the constant degradation eventually wear her down? A love story in the mold of The Story of O, Bad Guy is a harrowing descent into self-annihilation, a terrifying spin on class warfare, a despairing look at masochism's relationship to the world's oldest profession and maybe plain old human existence as well. It's a date movie for people who don't want to touch afterwards.