Letter #78: The K-Crush Movie Medley!

Good morning, Erin.

As Mr. Queen turns out to be a much, um, slower watch than I had anticipated, and with all the other shows on my current watch list still weeks and weeks away from wrapping up, I took a little detour into the world of cinema, temporarily allowing me to sate my lack of interpersonal affection by cooing over pretty Korean gir—um, I mean, allowing me to enjoy some easy-to-manage stories starring some of my favorite actors (whom I may, coincidentally, also have crushes on maybe who knows). 

Excited? Of course you are! 

No spoilers.

I. Dream

The dude from Secretary Kim coaches a handful of homeless men who will represent South Korea in an international soccer tournament. And also IU is there. 

1. It’s almost wrong to start with this one, Erin, because it is F***ING AWESOME, and I had THE BEST time with it. Funny, brilliantly paced, heartfelt—just an all-around triumph, from the writing to the acting to the direction to the editing. Absolutely loved it. MASSIVE recommend. 

1A. More specifically, given that I really only watched it because IU is the prettiest girl in the world (maybe), I had absolutely no preconceptions about this movie whatsoever. Like, I knew it was going to have soccer in it, but that’s about it. So, to walk away with what I got…hoo-boy. Go watch it now, if you somehow haven’t already. 

2. IU is very good, but she’s also not as big a presence as the trailer would lead you to believe, even if she is there the whole time. The real standout is the dude from Secretary Kim, who is absolutely fantastic. He’s so, so, soooo funny. And he seems to be having an absolute blast the whole time. It completely turned me around on the actor (not that I disliked him—I just wasn’t impressed with him in Secretary Kim, as I’m sure you remember). 

3. …that said, IU’s big moments are all home runs, so it’s not like she wasn’t also absolutely bringing it with her performance. 

4. I really can’t stress enough how brilliantly paced this movie is. It’s constantly moving. And the first ten minutes are brilliant in how much information they give you, how clever the edits from shot to shot are, and how skillfully it grounds you in the specific comedic tone of the film. Just…ugh—so good.

5. If there’s a downside to the movie (and I’m not even really saying this is a real negative), it’s that the pacing is so quick and the writing is so sharp that the first half of the movie feels like it’s twice as long as it actually is. Which means when you get to the turn in the plot (more on that in a moment), you think the film must be over—because it’s been two hours, right? Well, no, you’ve just sat through two hours-worth of storytelling in one hour. Which can fill you with just a moment of exhaustion. 

5A. Similarly, the first and second halves don’t feel like the same movie. Related movies, absolutely, like watching a film and its direct sequel. I think it’s one of the positives about the film, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. 

6. For the record: like most people watching this movie (I assume), I had no idea the Homeless World Cup was a thing. But now I do. And…neat? I mean, it’s interesting as a charity event, but it also sounds…like, slightly exploitative, maybe. At first blush, I mean. I dunno. But if it helps people, my immediate reaction is utterly irrelevant. 

7. Relatedly: I don’t know how accurate the soccer part of this story is, but…geez, they let this variant of the game get pretty frikkin’ brutal. So, if it’s even a little bit accurate, it’s easy to see why the Korean team became the underdog darlings of 2010.

8. Oh, did I mention that IU flexes both her English and Japanese skills in a two-minute window? Impressive. And, I’m not ashamed to say, surprisingly sexy. 

8A. …not that the flippin’ subtitles let me know she’d switched over to Japanese. I just had to trust my ears. And you know how I feel about that. 

9. And I almost forgot to list the people I recognized:

• Ms. Jang from Hotel Del Luna as the documentary filmmaker 

• Mr. Lee from Secretary Kim as the soccer player-turned-coach

• the recruiter from Glitch as a homeless soccer team member

• the shady book reviewer from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a homeless soccer team member

• Young-woo’s law firm CEO from Extraordinary Attorney Woo as the male lead’s mom

• the magistrate (or whatever) from Kingdom as the mom’s new beau

• the main cop from When the Camellia Blooms as the pro team’s captain

II. Yeonga

Kim Go-eun proves that she can make even the most pretentious college-film dialogue sound genuine in a short film about…um…

1. I don’t know for a fact that this is a college film, but it’s clearly something done by, like, new or non-professional filmmakers. Lots of static camera shots at indirect angles in an attempt to look “artsy” as a way of masking the limitations of either the budget and/or equipment. And it all feels like imitation rather than craft. Like, it doesn’t feel like these shots add anything to scenes. In short, the whole thing’s functional but amateur. 

2. The script is equally unimpressive (and imitation-“artsy”)—but it does have one line in it near the very beginning that is legitimately good. In hindsight, at least. Which…I mean, credit where it’s due, right?

3. So, yeah, skip this one. Unless you also have a crush on Kim Go-eun. Then definitely watch it. 

4. I think it almost goes without saying that Kim Go-eun is excellent, in this, but it’s also worth mentioning that she’s, y’know, excellent in this. And everything she’s ever been in. And she runs circles around her co-star.

5. …which takes us to the actors I recognized segment:

• Eun-tak from Goblin as the female lead

• Sanchez from Hotel Del Luna as the male lead (who I only knew from his voice…again)

6.This film is 23 minutes long. And my favorite number is 23. Which, to me, feels like destiny.

6A. “Isn’t Kim Go-eun in a relationship with her former co-star from—”

THERE’S NO TIME, ERIN!

III. The Childe

A young half-Filipino/half-Korean man travels to meet his wealthy Korean father and is pursued by hired killer Good Boy. Or something. 

1. HE’S BACK! HE’S BACK! MY BOY IS BAAAAAAACK!!!

2. And he’s so very, very good. His character isn’t particularly special, on the page, but Good Boy just brings a special kind of energy to all of his performances, making acting choices that most other actors wouldn’t make. 

2A. And, while we’re on it, Good Boy looks good running. (You know I keep track of these things.) He’s not quite Tom Cruise-level running, but he’s definitely at least at Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 level. 

3. That said, this is a bizarre, slow, not especially good film. In my mind, Good Boy would be the only reason to watch. (I mean, the actor who plays the boss-villain is also good, but I wouldn’t tune in just for his performance.) Which, y’know…there are worse reasons to watch something than Good Boy. Otherwise, give it a pass.

4. The action scenes are pretty sweet, though. No taking away from that. 

5. There’s A LOT of English spoken in this movie. And, with very rare exception, it’s awful. Like, there’s a legit Australian in one of the scenes, and he’s as hard to understand as everyone else. (Yes, including Good Boy.) Only the Filipino bartender near the very start of the movie speaks clearly enough to seem as though he regularly speaks English. 

5A. Fortunately, the subtitles come up for the (supposed) English dialogue, too! Woo-hoo!

5B. …which is its own kind of thing, really, because the poor fansubber clearly couldn’t tell what people were saying when they were speaking in English and ended up translating things as they sounded, at times, rather than what would presumably be said given the context of the sentences. 

5C. What’s doubly interesting about this is that the English dialogue has Korean subtitles (in the original movie), which I assume means the fansubber doesn’t read Korean. 

6. The title of the movie is…odd. It comes up in English (like, literally on screen in the movie’s official title sequence) as “The Childe,” while the Korean title is translated as “The Nobleman,” yet the literal translation is “The Scion.” The last of these three is probably the most plot-relevant, and the first two are the script-listed names for Good Boy’s character. [shrug] The best I can come up with is that this is a very clever bit of wordplay I would not be able to pick up on, like if all three were somewhat interchangeable in the original Korean. 

7. What’s that? You want to know if I thought the bratty little sister was #bestgirl? Well…no, wait, I sense you were being sarcastic. 

8. But who did I recognize?

• Good Boy from Start-Up as the hitman or whatever

• the assistant coach from Dream (yes, the movie mentioned above) as a lawyer

9. “Wait, if this is a letter about movies starring your crushes, doesn’t that make Kim Seon-ho one of—”

I SAID THERE’S NO TIME, ERIN!

IV. Alienoid 1

Crouching Iron Man, Hidden Time Bandits. And also Kim Tae-ri is there. 

1. What an odd movie. I mean, I liked it, all in all, but it is weird. And potentially much more complicated than it needs to be: there’s time-traveling aliens who live in 2022 and use human minds as literal prisons for their species' criminals (just go with it) as well as a concurrent plot in 1390 where all the major players know magic. It all sort of comes together, but it feels like it didn’t need to have every layer added on to it for it to work. 

1A. Then again, the creators obviously wanted to do some kind of fancy genre combo, so I guess maybe they did need it. 

2. Kim Tae-ri, martial arts action star! is something I didn’t know I desperately wanted. She’s really good at the action and physicality stuff. (She doesn’t have to act very much, in this.) She moves really, really well—like, I dunno if she’s a dancer or has a history of fight training or what. And she still looks good running. I want her to be in another one of these fighty-fighty movies. Team her up with the lead actress in Love to Hate You. That’d be amazing.

3. The martial arts fantasy side of this story is A LOT of fun and features my favorite characters (the hilarious “dual mages of the mountain”). The sci-fi side of the story is…not awful, but much less good. 

3A. To wit: the wire work for the fights is not as, like, aesthetically pleasing as Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers, but it’s good enough to be both effective and a lot of fun. But the CGI for the sci-fi is…herculean. As in it could have been pulled from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. (Which, if you are not familiar with the 1990s Channel 11 TV series, is not a compliment. The CGI is fairly low-budget and unimpressive. It’s good enough for the story to progress, but it’s not what it should be.)

4. I swear they filmed the 2022 section of the story wherever they filmed Logan. I mean, obviously they didn’t. But…I mean, just look at it!

5. Oh, wait—I say give it a shot, if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill. It’s a Part 1, so it ends on a kind of cliffhanger (promising a much more cohesive sequel), but it’s still fun, despite its flaws. 

5A. That said…should it have been a short series, a la Kingdom, instead of a movie? Maybe. 

6. And I knew a few people in this one, too—though I should mention that most of them were in these obscure bit-part cameos. Including one MDL assured me was there but I just did not see (until I asked the interwebs and was told where to look):

• Hee-do from Twenty-Five, Twenty-One/San-yeong from Revenant as the girl with the gun

• the male lead from Little Forest as the dude with the fan

• the bartender guy from Hotel Del Luna as a cat/lackey

• the simple-minded patient from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a prisoner

• Grandma from Start-Up as a mute servant (Woo! Revenant party!)

• the evil spirit from Revenant as a bride (Woo! Revenant ménage-a-trois! (No—literally!))

• Ju-ri from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha as the little girl’s best friend

• the evil spirit lady from The Uncanny Counter as a doctor

• the dad from My Name as a patient

• Ms. Hong from Vincenzo/Ms. Hong from Glitch as…heh, a villager named Ms. Hong

V. Homme Fatale

The dude from King the Land invents Joseon “girls’ night” and makes some gestures at modern-day egalitarianism as he becomes the first male kisaeng. And also Jung So-min is there. 

1. I mean…you didn’t think I’d do this whole shtick and not include my K-drama girlfriend, did you?

2. Speaking of: she doesn’t get much to do, in this movie, but the couple of moments where Jung So-min is allowed to do some real acting, she once again proves she is a much better actress than many of her roles give her room to be. I haven’t seen her whole filmography (yet!), but she deserves meatier roles than most of what I’ve seen her in, so far. Not that I don’t love her in all the stuff I’ve seen her in, and maybe she’s not as interested in the kind of stuff I’m talking about, but…she’s good, I’m saying—not just cute and sweet and with a quiet strength. And I want to see her be able to really flex her skills, like she was able to in Fix You. 

3. Anyway, the movie: it’s pretty funny. Maybe not always laugh-out-loud funny, but a consistent level of chuckling funny. It puts a lot of this onto one character, who is very much designed specifically to be the “jokey” one—as in, you need to find him funny to justify him being an element of the story. (There’s also a little girl who is asked to do a fair amount of lifting.) I think the movie succeeds in this—or, at least, I think he’s very entertaining. 

3A. …so, yes, I think it was pretty good. I don’t know that the whole movie is as cohesive as it should have been, likely because they montage the middle bit (which is where a significant amount of character development gets handwaved into existence)—and especially given how the third act plays out—but it was still a good movie, overall. I say give it a watch. 

4. To further sell it, here’s a great out of context line: “I should have become one with the sack.”

5. But who did I know?

• Ji-ho from Because This is My First Life/Mu-deok from Alchemy of Souls as the female lead

• the cleaner from Celebrity as the male lead

• the class president from All of Us are Dead as the servant girl at the start of the movie

• the teen girl with the awful dad in Summer Strike as a young kisaeng 

5A. Also, full disclosure: I don’t know the lead from his role in King the Land. I just saw that that was what he was in, and “the cleaner from the cameo at the very end of Celebrity” would not have been anywhere near as funny for the description I gave this movie. 

5B. “...that was funny?”

How dare you. As if my heart isn’t already broken, Erin. 

And that is where we’ll end that. 

Thank you for joining me on this detour into gawking at some of my faves because there’s only so much love you can keep bottled up before it has to go somewhere. 

And Heart Signal 4 is only on once a week. 

—Daryl