Girl Scout: Girls Just Wanna Have Funds

There was a stretch where I was enjoying Girl Scout, Kim Sang-man's chick-flick, action-pic comedy. Now I'm trying to remember when I completely lost interest. The movie definitely has elements in its favor. It's a heist film. It's grrrl-powered. It's periodically funny. It's class-conscious. It's even efficient in how it sets up its plot: Four friends must retrieve money from swindlers so one (Kim Seon-a) can open her dream diner, one (Lee Kyeong-shil) can get her child an operation, one (Na Mun-hee) can quit a degrading job, and one (Ko Jun-hee) can go on a shopping spree. So where did it go wrong exactly? One problem is the movie doesn't establish definitively who the villain is. The vixen (Lim Ji-eun) who's stolen their money is actually in cahoots with a crook (Park Won-song) who may or may not be her boss. Is the lady thief a victim? She sure gets slapped around a bit by her partner. Are they working as a team? It doesn't seem so. What's their history? And why do they also have two million dollars in government bonds alongside the stolen cash?

None of these questions arose while I watched Girl Scout, mind you. My curiosity dwindled down to nil about halfway through the pic. I didn't care what the crime was. I didn't care who the criminal was. I certainly didn't care if justice was served. What's weird is that you get the feeling that the main four women don't care that much about each other either. At least two of the four friends are easily persuaded to betray the others, and no one seems overly concerned with the one woman's son getting the surgery he so desperately needs. (The doctor included!) As to the loan shark (Ryu Tae-joon), he's more distraction than attraction despite his photogenic looks. Whether he's a good guy or a bad guy, he barely registers at all.

Note to Korean Filmmakers: Jeon Ji-ae, who has a bit part as a waitress who works at the bar where much of the action occurs, is really good in a very small part. Someone please cast her in a bigger role!

National Security: The Horror of Torture

As any horror movie fan knows, a little torture can go a long way. Much of what contributes to the chills that accompany any on-screen violence are the near brushes and the possible repeat offenses whether they eventually happen or not. All this is of little concern to Jeong Ji-yeong, the director behind National Security. In his admittedly horrific protest film about the systematic torture of civil rights activists under South Korea's military dictatorship, Jeong shows a horror chamber's worth of physical sufferings as unlawfully detained prisoner Kim Jong-tae (Park Won-sang) is punched, kicked, slapped, water-boarded, electrocuted, starved, force-fed chile powder, and all-but-drowned. We also see his shoulder dislocated and witness as he's led by a belt around his throat as if he were a dog on a too-tight choke-chain. It's also so unremitting that you may forget that he's being sleep deprived, too.

Driven past the brink of madness, Kim eventually confesses first to whatever his torturers dictate then second to what appears to be pretty close to the truth -- a problematic plot point suggesting these methods, though cruel, actually work. Kim doesn't really understand the inflictors of pain except as examples of jobless youths, detached societal rejects, and sociopaths. They may, like the movie, be "based on a true story" but nevertheless, no one in power feels really real. Not that I want to see a realer depiction of torture. Better that Kim make his points following Brecht's dictum that “art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” Kim pounds away at his messages: Torture is inhuman; the normalization of physical cruelty misshapes the perpetrator as well as the victim; no one escapes violence unscathed. As the victim, Park may not be the greatest actor but you still wince when you see his head pushed underwater or watch his mouth fill with foam as the electricity courses through his body. You might argue the same point could be made in a short but part of Kim's point seems to be that cruelty knows no bounds. Why begrudge the time he takes to emphasize that.

Unbowed: Math Professor's Case Doesn't Add Up in Court

Jeong Ji-yeong's courtroom drama Unbowed starts off about the defense attorney, shifts to being about the defendant then ends up not being about anyone. What we learn about the lawyer (Park Won-sang) is that he's an alcoholic with a bumpy marriage, a flirty nature, and a strained relationship with his co-workers. He's not particularly likable. (Blame must be placed in part on Park who's drunk scenes are truly execrable.) But he at least knows he's fallible.

Not so his client, a mathematics professor (Ahn Song-kee) who, from what I can tell, was appropriately fired from his university job for not knowing the difference between perpendicular and parallel. After fleeing to the U.S. with his wife and son in tow, he decides to come back to fight for his position and ends up bringing a crossbow to the apartment building of a judge who dismissed his case. Does he shoot? Does it matter?

Far from being contrite, the teacher is sure he's getting the short end of the stick from the university system, the legal system, the police department, the media, and so on. He could be right but he's so damned arrogant that it's hard to rally behind him as he spits out every code that's being violated from his well-underlined law book to one smug judge (Lee Kyeong-yeong) after another (Moon Sung-keun). Like him or not, he's the most interesting part of the movie so when he temporarily drops out of the story after getting raped in prison, the film loses its preferred protagonist. By the time he returns, you forget his underdog status (which makes him somewhat sympathetic) and just remember his jerkiness.

Believe it or not, Unbowed is based on a real story. I don't doubt that someone could have the misfortune of facing a series of amoral judges or that an editor would shut down a story because he just didn't want to deal with the repercussions or that a woman would stay with her husband after he slept over another woman's place. What is hard to believe is that someone thought this particular trial merited a cinematic treatment. It doesn't. Or if it does, Unbowed needed a screenwriter with a stronger sense of character, actors who knew who to play drunk, and a cinematographer with a richer palette.