TWO FILMS BY NA-HONG JIN IN CONTRAST TO ONE ANOTHER - THE CHASER AND THE YELLOW SEA

Korean director Na-Hong Jin has made two films - THE CHASER and THE YELLOW SEA.  Both could be described as “action thrillers” and both exceed the two hour mark but the end result is very different.

THE CHASER is taut all the way through never letting up on the intensity.  As The ex-cop turned pimp races against time to save a hooker employee from a serial killer, we never once lose interest.  The various twists and turns are clearly understood by the audience and make it more than just a chase film.  A fantastic film!

Contrast that with THE YELLOW SEA.  What is actually a great plot – a poor Korean cab driver in a section of China bordering Korea is offered a a chance by a local gangster to clear his gambling debts and find his missing wife who has gone to Seoul for work.  First, he must kill a person in Seoul for the gangster.

The problem with this film isn’t the filmmaking.  It’s just as tense as THE CHASER. Some of the chase scenes are even better.  The scene where the cab driver is smuggled into Korea could be a primer in human trafficking.  However, in the second half, once the murder plot is revealed to be much more conspiratorial and convoluted than thought, the film loses complete control of the plot.  There were times when I had no idea what was going on.  In this the long length hurts the film.

I should say that part of the problem might be the English subtitles on my version.  Read some posting on the IMDB forum for this movie and that seems to be a problem for many.

In any event, the two films stand in contrast to one another – Both multi-layered thrillers over two hours but with very different results.

I should also mention Kim Yoon-Seok who plays the hero in THE CHASER but the villain in THE YELLOW SEA.  His performance is one of the best things about both of these films.

Let’s hope Na-Hong Jin doesn’t lose control of the plot for his third film.  No question about his visual directorial skills.      

MOVEMENT IN COMEDY EG THE HORSE'S MOUTH, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, THE MARX BROTHERS

Painter Gully Jimson as played by Alec Guinness, the antagonist/protagonist of THE HORSE’S MOUTH, is in constant motion.  Whether it’s due to sudden artistic inspiration, the necessities of survival such as finding food or shelter or simply running away from someone he doesn’t want to see, the humor of this character lies not just in Guinness’s stoop shouldered grunting, almost primal characterization but in his almost perpetual motion.

  
The best film comedies, the most successful at being funny, are those without many slow moments-too much conversation, romantic scenes etc. The perfect example of this is The Marx Brothers’ films in which the brilliant seemingly free form absurdity runs headlong into dumb musical numbers that bring everything to a screeching halt.  The correct response to a musical number is like the end of DUCK SOUP when Margaret Dumont starts to sing the Freedonia national anthem and they pelt her with fruit.

 IT’S A MAD MAD MAD WORLD, one of my favorite comedies, has duel storylines all filled with movement and action (and when I say movement and action I don’t necessarily mean the physical I also mean rapid fire conversation like The Marxs’ films or the screwball comedies of the 30’s and 40’s THE AWFUL TRUTH or MY FAVORITE WIFE or HIS GIRL FRIDAY.).  MAD has an all-star cast and each one is at his tip top best, fully on as they execute their individual pratfalls whether they be verbal or physical.

Modern comedies are often based around the stand-up comic or as starring vehicles for performers from sketch comedy shows like SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.  The end result is usually repetitive, brain dead, and doesn’t have any life.

Life is movement and comedy is an amplification of life and should also maintain an amplification of movement.  At the end of THE HORSE’S MOUTH, Gully Jimson gets in his boat and escapes from the chaos down the river and out to sea.  At the end of IT’S A MAD MAD MAD WORLD Ethel Merman slips on a banana peel and falls to the ground and everyone present laugh at her (except for son Dick Shawn).  

 

      

THE SILENCE (DAS LETZTE SCHWEIGEN)

The German film THE SILENCE (DAS LETZTE SCHWEIGEN) brings to mind MEMORIES OF MURDER, THE VANISHING and other films where the crime in question, murder, is not quite solved and the viewer is left with a feeling that someone has gotten away with something.

In this film, there is no doubt who the killers are in the first murder.  We see a flashback wherein two friends linked by shared perverse interests, student Timo and groundskeeper Peer, waylay, rape and kill a young girl 23 years in the past.  Actually, it is just Peer.  Timo sits in the car and watches and then once the body is disposed of moves away and starts a new life.

The killing of a new girl in much the same way but without the audience’s knowledge who the killer is brings Timo and Peer back together and also involves the recently retired detective who investigated the first case, his younger former partner still on the force and dealing with the recent death of his wife, and the mother of the first victim as well as the parents of the second victim.  This is as much a narrative told through many different pairs of eyes as it is a detective story.  This makes for a very active easy to follow story that is gripping in its immediacy.

There are plotholes in this story – people know things they shouldn’t actually know nor do they pick up on things happening they should pick up on.  I particularly didn’t like the scene where Timo visits the mother of the first victim and she instinctually knows he was involved in the killing.  Theirs is nothing in the scene or the acting to give this away.

Still, this is a methodical, well shot film and it leads to a very satisfyingly dark ending.  Its commentary on the nature of child molesters and how they are unable to quit their behavior handled very well.

FROM HERO TO VILLAIN - RED RIVER, SUSPICION, ROBERT MITCHUM, AND TRAINING DAY

Throughout most of RED RIVER, John Wayne doesn’t seem evil so much as crazy.  His violence towards the men he’s employed to help drive his cattle and his explosive resentment when his adopted son (played by Montgomery Clift) tries to protect them seems caused by some deep seated mental illness.  The kiss and make up ending where Wayne and Clift’s characters almost do exactly that seems unnatural considering Wayne spent much of the second half of the film talking about killing Clift when they meet again(In the original short story Wayne’s character is killed by someone else while trying to gun down Clift’s character).  This doesn’t take away from this excellent film which is probably Wayne’s best but illustrates how hard it used to be for studios to cast actors normally seen as heroes in the role of villains.

An even more blatant example is Alfred Hitchcock’s SUSPICION.  For almost the whole picture, we share Joan Fontaine’s suspicion that her husband Cary Grant is trying to kill her.  The revelation at the end that this is not the case feels tacked on and sudden and ruins the whole film for me.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Supposedly, the studio could not bring itself to have Cary Grant play a villain and changed the original script.

While both Wayne and Grant could have played passable villains by exploring sides of themselves visible to the moviegoer but kept in check usually , Wayne the loudmouthed bully, Grant the unctuous Casanova, having them do this for a whole film was seen as potential box office poison – The audience couldn’t or wouldn’t take it.

But when a leading man does embrace villainous roles sometimes they find that is their true calling.  Case in point – Robert Mitchum.  Mitchum made scores of forgettable cookie cutter dramas and action films but his best roles were when he either played villains (THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER-His greatest film, CAPE FEAR) or men in a gray area between villainy and expedience (OUT OF THE PAST, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE).  With his heavy lidded eyes, slow deep delivery hinting at a greater intelligence, and muscular physique, Mitchum gave off unpredictability that wouldn’t him make so accessible if you met him on the street.  You might keep your distance from such a man.  At least watch him warily.

Mitchum was one of the first actors to easily slide from heroic leading man to villain and back again.  Nowadays, this is not such a big thing.  In fact, it seems that for many actors having one at least villainous role on their resume is their desire.

Denzel Washington won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in TRAINING DAY as a corrupt cop manipulating a new partner.  For much of the film you are not sure if he is genuinely evil or simply using off the book tactics to do his job.  The fact that Washington imbues his character with a nobility and a sympathy and an attention to duty (all of which prove to be facades) knowing all the while what reveal is coming tells us what a complete understanding of the role he has.  A truly well-thought out performance.

I would imagine playing villains is fun for actors.  They get all the good lines and often a flashy death scene.  Might be a nice break from playing the boring hero.