Soo: People Who Look Alike Have the Same Kind of Trouble

Twins in a thriller is a lazy conceit. Well, a half-hearted thanks then to Soo, a movie which has the decency to introduce the lookalikes early on then kill one off fairly quickly. No, the uncanny resemblance in this Sai Yoichi crime pic doesn't play out as a case of mistaken identity but instead as a case of an assumed one. You see Brother A (Ji Jin-hee) has decided that the best way to track down the killer of Brother B is to impersonate the murdered sibling (same actor, of course). For A to pass as B completely, he gets a new haircut (a salon-caliber home-job) and a fresh, cool scar sliced into his chin. The corpse's not-so-helpful girlfriend (Kang Seong-yeon) knows this new guy's an impostor but she's willing to move in with him, hoping to have sex with him, and seeking to pick up where the last relationship left off. Why complain that you've lost your boyfriend if a facsimile shows up at the police prefecture where you both work? Plus, he's three seconds faster at running the 100-yard dash and can defend himself with a can of hairspray and a lighter. This guy rips off ears and tears out eyeballs. That's how tough he is! As for his victims, they all go down with the same scream whether they're being stabbed or strangled or shot or all of the above.

The King and The Clown: A Daisy Chain of Tops and Bottoms

Indigent circus performers strike it rich. Now that's a cause for celebration, right? Sure, it is. But for some lucky clowns, it's also a cause for consternation. You see, when this particular tightrope walker (Kam Woo-seong) and his cross-dressing sidekick (Lee Jun-gi) find favor with a somewhat crazy, petulantly sadistic emperor (Jeong Jin-yeong), they also find themselves drawn into more than one troubled love triangle and some life-threatening political intrigue. But can the rope-walking acrobat help caring so deeply about his cross-dressing cohort? And can the cross-dresser help inspiring lusty thoughts in that kooky king? And, for that matter, can the royal courtesan (Kang Seong-yeon) help being jealous of that role-playing pretty boy who's also good with puppets and has a unique calligraphic style? No. No. No. A magnificently told tale based on a true story from the 16th century Chosun dynasty, The King and the Clown is a topnotch, romantic costume drama that knows when to be comic even if it's headed for tragedy. The performances are uniformly excellent, right down to the minor characters. Needless to say, I'll be checking out other collaborations of director Lee Jun-ik and writer Choi Seok-hwan.