Beasts Clawing at Straws (Jipuragirado japgo sipeun jimseungdeul)

She drives all night.

(2020) Thriller (Artsploitation) Do-yeon Jeon, Woo-sung Jung, Sung-Woo Bae, Man-sik Jeong, Jin Kyung, Shin Hyon Bin, Ga-ram Jung, Jun-han Kim, Yuh Jung Youn. Directed by Yong-hoon Kim

 

South Korea has been quietly, without fanfare, turning into a world class film capitol. It’s no accident that the most recent Best Picture came from South Korea; the movies there have been getting better and better in quality over the past 15 years, and now can proudly be put up there with any on the planet.

This ensemble noir black comedy/drama/thriller starts off with a Louis Vuitton bag left in a sauna locker. The very put-upon attendant at the gym, Jung-Man (Bae) discovering that the bag is full of cash. Enough to make a lot of problems go away, and brother, does Jung-Man have problems. His mother is convinced that Jung-Man’s wife is trying to kill her, but only if her son’s fecklessness doesn’t kill her first; she’s convinced her flesh and blood can do nothing right. The kind of money that’s in the bag can get the bitter old woman into a facility for bitter old women and Jung-Man and his wife into a nicer home.

But how did that bag get there in the first place? Oh, that’s explained in a flashback as Tae-Young (W-s Jung), a customs inspector with the moral compass that always points at his own best interests, has fallen deeply into debt to mobster Du Man (Jeong). You see, Tae’s girlfriend, brothel owner Yeon-Hee (Jeon) ran out on her debt to Du Man after Tae-Young vouched for her, meaning that now he owes her debt. He must come up with the money quickly, and so he comes up with a scheme to defraud a sucker, whose girlfriend, Mi Ran (Bin) works in the brothel of Yeon-Hee. The sucker also beats her regularly, so she enlists a Chinese client to kill the boyfriend and make it look like an accident. There is also a greasy cop who is sure that something unsavory is going on, and there’s also a serial killer on the loose. Got all that so far?

It sounds like a mess and I’ll admit that early on, it’s a bit difficult to follow. You need to be on your toes and paying attention, but I promise you, it is truly worth it. The ending brings all these separate stories together and as things slowly begin to untangle, your first instinct will be “How did I not SEE that coming” before sinking into a satisfied smirk that you’ve lucked into watching one of the better crime movies in recent memory.

The ensemble cast is really good – there’s not a false note in any performance that I could see. The movie is so well-scripted and so perfectly plotted that even though you may sometimes have some doubts that the filmmakers can tie all this together, they do. That they do with as much style and humor as they do is a tribute to their filmmaking skills; I’d put this on the level of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, two filmmakers who have clearly influenced Yong-hoon Kim a great deal.

If you like movies that keep you guessing, if you like movies that have endings that give you faith that it is still possible to create great movies, if you like movies that you like better the more you think about it after seeing it, and if you don’t mind slowly building to that point, this is a movie you need to see. Keep an eye out for it on your favorite streaming service; this one’s a keeper.

REASONS TO SEE: An intricate plot that keeps you guessing. The ending is jaw-dropping.
REASONS TO AVOID: A bit of a slog at times (but worth it in the end).
FAMILY VALUES: There is some violence and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is based on a novel by Japanese writer Keisuke Sone.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Rakuten Viki
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/3/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Knives Out
FINAL RATING: 8.5/10
NEXT: Recon

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The Defiant Ones, these ain't.

(2008) Crime Drama (Warner Brothers) Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Mark Strong, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Toby Kebbell, Jeremy Piven, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Karel Roden, Gemma Arterton. Directed by Guy Ritchie

Few directors do crime movies as well as Guy Ritchie. Movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are highly entertaining, highly stylized British gangster pictures. He’d taken a brief break from the genre with the somewhat cerebral Revolver but fans of his first two movies rejoiced at his return to the genre in this movie. Was there reason to cheer?

One Two (Butler) is a mid-level criminal who leads a loose bunch of associates dubbed “The Wild Bunch,” with Mumbles (Elba) his right hand man and Handsome Bob (Hardy). He is in a real estate deal with Lenny (Wilkinson), the kingpin of London crime, an old school boss whose grip on the throne is slowly slipping away. Lenny screws over One Two, keeping both the land and the money that One Two gives him. To add insult to injury, he insists that One Two owes him two million pounds, which One Two doesn’t have – because Lenny stole his stash.

So One Two sets out to get two million pounds and figure out a way to get Lenny back while avoiding Archy (Strong), Lenny’s right hand muscle. That will involve a Russian mobster (Roden) who has lent Lenny his lucky painting, a sexy bookkeeper (Newton) in stilettos who’s smart and greedy, a dead junkie rock star (Kebbell) who is rather far from deceased, and a pair of American music promoters (Piven and Bridges).

I’ve tried to give you an idea about the plot; quite frankly, it’s so convoluted that trying to sum it up in any more detail will be not only futile but unnecessarily confusing. Therein lies one of the problems here; there are so many threads going on that at times your brain threatens to explode. While Ritchie is known for weaving multiple threads through his storyline, here it doesn’t work as well as it does in his other films. While I’m not against complex plots per se, I am against overly complicated plots. There’s a difference – and this one falls into the latter category.

That doesn’t mean all the threads don’t work though. There are some pretty good acting performances here, particularly from the always charming Butler, Elba and Strong, who does double duty as the narrator. Wilkinson is a terrific actor who makes Lenny thoroughly reprehensible. In fact, nearly every role is well-acted.

There are plenty of excellent action sequences as well. Ritchie has a flair for them and for that sudden violence that takes the audience by surprise (there are a few gotcha scenes here that I thoroughly enjoyed). He also has a flair for the language and the flow of the words – few movies sound as good as a Guy Ritchie movie in that regard, even if we Americans can’t understand everything that’s being said at all times. To my admittedly uneducated ear, it all sounds authentic.

There are also some positively funny moments here. Some of the laughs are of the kind you feel guilty about later for having laughed; those are the kind that takes you by surprise. Yeah, I know it’s wrong but I laughed anyway – is that so wrong?

No, it’s not. While this isn’t up to Ritchie’s previous output, it’s still solidly entertaining. If you haven’t seen his first two films, by all means start there. If you’re a Gerard Butler fan, by all means start here. Either way, Ritchie has carved a nice niche out for himself. While he has gone on to the Sherlock Holmes movies (with a new one coming out in December), these may be the kinds of movies that define his career as a filmmaker and if so, not a bad tombstone to leave behind.

WHY RENT THIS: Guy Ritchie doing what he does best. Funny and violent where it needs to be.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Not up to his best stuff. Too many plot lines going on at once.

FAMILY VALUES: The language is rough and pervasive; there’s also a good deal of violence and drug use. There is a little bit of sex as well.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: According to director Guy Ritchie, this is the first film in a trilogy starring the Wild Bunch. However, there are no plans at this time to film the sequel anytime soon.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a featurette called “Guy’s Town” which looks at the locations in London where the movie was filmed and commentary from Ritchie about how the face of London has changed over the past ten years.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $25.7M on an unreported production budget; the movie broke even at best but more likely lost money.

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

TOMORROW: True Grit (2010)