Review of Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi)

I’ve decided to review this particular installment of Chan-Wook Park’s The Vengeance Trilogy because after recently re-watching all three this one stood out the most. 

From brutal South Korean director Chan-Wook Park comes, Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Lady Vengeance), the final installment of his vengeance trilogy.  Released in 2005, the film came after Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy (arguably the best of the three and certainly the most well-regarded). 

     While containing the relentless violence and bloodletting of his previous films, Lady Vengeance primarily separates itself from the previous installments in two significant ways.  First we find ourselves seeing a female revenge seeker which is apparent from the title, but still needs to be mentioned and emphasized.  Secondly and perhaps most importantly, the film takes a look at vengeance from a larger group standpoint.

     The protagonist, Geum ja-lee, is a young woman who falsely admits to kidnapping and murdering a young boy to keep her own daughter alive, even if it means sending her to an orphanage.  In prison, she becomes the face of good penal behavior, assuring herself an expedited sentence.  Upon her release though, it becomes clear that the cartoonish Christian re-birth she underwent while incarcerated is but a mere ploy, which is evidenced by her flippant attitude towards the priest who framed her as the face of repentance and perhaps more subtly by her striking red eye shadow.

     Once she is out of jail, the film’s terrific editing takes hold.  At first the structure of the narrative is overwhelming, but once a rhythm is established one cannot help but admire Park’s ability to introduce all of the key players in the revenge plot.  Each woman that Geum ja-lee aids in prison gets her own vignette which is slowly, but assuredly woven into the bigger plot of Geum ja’s revenge.  Without fail, each fellow inmate is indebted to Geum ja and promise to help her once they each serve out their sentences.  Already the movie is establishing a myriad of thematic questions about the nature of kindness and generosity, specifically whether generosity arises from self interest or genuine compassion for others.  Does it even matter? Do those receiving the favors care?  Probably not.

     While the careful plot work is is something to admire, the film packs its strongest moral and philosophical punch when the act of vengeance is finally revealed.  After catching the man who forced her into prison we learn that he is a teacher who has been captruing and murdering countless children.  Geum ja methodically tracks down the victim’s parents who up to this point did not know the sad fate that awaited their children since their bodies were never found.  She then shows each of them video of their children being killed and offers them a simple choice.  Do they wish to take the evidence to the authorities and afford the man his due legal process or do they want to take justice into their own hands? 

     The scene that follows is a terrific homage to Fritz Lang’s M whereby we see the victims argue how best to pursue justice and in a darkly comedic wink to the audience, Park has the entire scene take place in an abandoned class room--you can make your own remark about a hands on ethics class discussion.

     In the end Park is careful to neither condemn nor praise their final decision, and in light of recent events involving the shooting in the face of a certain terrorist I can’t help but think that it is the right directorial choice.  

Review of From Paris with Love

             I initially started this film as a throwaway to watch while I ate dinner, but as I quickly found out the movie is a very fun and straightforward action film.  From Paris with Love, which stars a boring and cheesy Jonathan Rhys Myers and crazy as ever John Travolta, both working for an unnamed spy group that keeps America safe, is from the school of action movies where the plot is an afterthought.  All one needs to know about the narrative complexities of the movie is summed up when Travolta explains to Meyers what he is doing by basically saying, “you wanna know what all this shit is about? its about killing fucking TERRORISTS.  Yes, terrorists; here in Paris.”
            For the most part, the film plays like your typical buddy-cop movie with Travolta being the Riggs of the group and Meyers the Murtaugh without any of the “I’m getting too old for this shit” charm.  Meyers seems to be trying to get into the spirit of the movie, but he simply can’t compete with Travolta’s scenery chewing and relish to play a bad-ass.  

So here we have movie that is unconcerned with plot and chemistry between characters; so then what is it concerned about?  Showing us how good John Travolta’s character is at killing people while Rhys Meyers stares in amazement while holding a very important two foot tall vase filled with cocaine--yes, that is actually in the movie, I’d almost be willing to venture out and say that that is the case of most of the movie.  What we have here is a film that strictly works off of terrific action scenes, and I’m not talking about those types action scenes that involve bullet time and cameras spinning 360 degrees.  These are good old fashioned sequences that involve guns, bazookas, speeding cars, and actually blowing stuff up.  

More than anything though I liked this film because it reminded me of action movies I watched growing up where you knew that the hero would not die and each scene somehow managed to top the previous one in terms of action and creativity in dispatching bad guys.  Whether or not director Pierre Morel intended this is unclear, but I’m willing to overlook heavy handed self-reference, a horribly cheesy ending, and a subplot about love and forgiveness to say that at least his intentions were in the right place. 

Review of Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage)

            

           From french director Geroges Franju comes Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face), a deliciously bizarre about a renown French surgeon who is obsessed by the rejuvenating powers of plastic surgery.  

After a horrific car accident in which his daughter’s face was brutally disfigured--her muscles and ligaments now permanently exposed--he tries in vain to succeed in a procedure called a heterograft which consists of a successful transplant of living human flesh.  In order to do this he needs donors, regardless of whether or not they consent.  To complete this nefarious task he sends his assistant to prowl the streets of Paris to find a candidate whose beauty matches that of his beloved Christiane.  

Eyes Without a Face deals in extremely heavy doses of suspense.  We are painstakingly taken through the vetting process of finding a girl who is beautiful enough.   Once chosen, she is slowly stalked and eventually lured towards her gruesome and inescapable fate.  All this happens with the viewer being completely aware of what awaits the lovely candidate--clearly Franju has mastered Hitchcock’s notion of suspense.  

Along with those suspenseful elements the film also contains impressive make up effects considering the time period.  The heterograft is shown in clinical detail from incision to full on removal with little more than the clever use of a fine paint brush to substitute a scalpel’s incision.  Although I must say that for such a complicated procedure it really only consists of two steps: an incision that runs along the bone structure of the face and a clean face lift.  

So then what does Christiane make of all this carnage in her name? While she is obviously distraught by her mangled face she doesn’t seem to be reviled by it.  Her father on the other hand is a perfectionist and along with his assistant, they dismiss her trying to reach acceptance and insist that she wear a white mask that makes her look like a lifeless porcelain doll until the procedure is successful.  To her, the mask is more frightening than the carnage underneath it.  This however does not bother the father whose obsession with beauty, control, and perfectionism is well worth the price of his morality and even his daughter’s happiness.  

Overall the movie attains something very rare, it somehow strikes a balance between meticulously crafted suspense, terror, and the type of hyperbolic imagery that not only borders on camp, but sheer melodrama. 

-Recommendation courtesy of Ceci

Review of Mesrine: Killer Instinct (L'instinct du mort)

Before I start this review, I should mention that this film is part of a duology, but because only the first part is available on Netflix Instant and I need to write a review this will just have to do.           

          L’instinct du mort (Mesrine: Killer Instinct) is the story of world famous French criminal, Jacques Mesrine, here played terrifically by Vincent Cassel.  Mesrine skyrocketed to international fame thanks to his daring robberies and escapes, all of which seemed to be validated when a Montreal newspaper labeled him, “Public Enemy No. 1.”  Whether this means he is a great gangster or a horrible one is up for debate since true power in the criminal world is usually associated with anonymity and not how many times you can successfully get yourself incarcerated, but this is not a film about his tactfulness, its about his sheer bravado and reliance on violence as the ultimate cure all.

The film begins with the titular character as a soldier during France’s disastrous occupation in Algeria.  It is here where he learns of the immense, yet fleeting power that comes through the use of brutal violence.  Once his tour is over he returns to his wealthy and well-off parents in Paris who eagerly await his arrival and even get him a job.  Clearly Algeria is still fresh on his mind and he rejects his new life, citing his dad as a Nazi sympathizer and instead follows his friend into a life of crime.

There is a lot to enjoy in the film directed by Jean-Francois Richet: strong action sequences that highlight Mesrine’s “make it up as you go” approach to crime, a focus on his love life, which is very much handled the same way as his criminal enterprises i.e. horribly and violently; and most interestingly, a focus on French social factors that ultimately mold his persona--a Nazi occupation that is still fresh in people’s minds and a disastrous Libyan situation with more than a few racial implications.   

Unfortunately though a lot of this gets lost thanks to an episodic narrative that finds us in different stages of Mesrine’s life with little more information than the city name and year at the bottom of the screen.  This effectively makes the viewer loose track of what does work in the film and leaves the whole thing feeling disjointed and unaffecting.  Here’s to hoping that Part 2 succeeds where Part 1 failed.

-Review of Part 2 coming soon.

Review of Enter the Void

 I am normally very weary about earnestly proclaiming a movie to be great or a director as, “the most important of our generation,” but while I won’t and will never say it, Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void almost got me to.  Before I proceed I should also note that Noé’s movies are not for everyone--especially Irreversible which I plan to watch again for a review soon--, many tend to find them physically nauseating, chauvinistic, violent, assiduous, incestuous, perverted, and basically the closest you can get to a high budget smut film.  Having said this though there is even more to say for his daring and talent as a film maker.  

    Enter the Void makes its entrance with a set of terrific opening credits that make you almost want to pause the movie to make sure that your television is not broken.  It is an unrelenting sensory assault that perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the film.  

The film itself is about Oscar, a teenage drug dealer whose death early on in the plot leads to a journey through the afterlife as he waits for his eventual rebirth. During his journey we see, among other things, the nauseatingly traumatizing moments that shaped his life as he witnessed them.  There is the horrific death of his parents, the separation and eventual longing for his sister because they were both adopted by different sets of parents, his life in Tokyo, his drug use, and his eventual foray into being a full time drug dealer.  This all occurs with no narration and little to no exposition.  After the story of his life has successfully been established the movie then takes a turn towards the hallucinogenic and auditory experiences of Oscar’s spirit as it gets closer and closer to reincarnation.

While the visuals of the film along with its countless transgressive elements will probably get a lot of the attention, the thing that makes the movie so engaging is how Noé tells the story.  The aforementioned attention grabbing elements are not presented to merely stand on their own, but rather to bookend the various episodes that Oscar re-experiences and experiences anew until they all become intertwined.  Enter the Void is the epic retelling of the protagonist’s life and everything that it encompassed for better or for worse.  If it all sounds exhausting, its because it is, but like any journey or quest, the pay off is well worth the anguish. 

Review of The Endless Summer

 Considering the relentless onslaught of disgusting winter weather we’ve been receiving in New York, Bruce Brown’s seminal 1966 surf documentary, The Endless Summer, comes as a much needed respite.  This classic surf film chronicles the adventures of two eighteen year old surfers: Micheal Hynson and Robert August, as they follow the summer around the world--the simple elegance of the concept alone is enough to merit a viewing.   

Their journey begins as summer in their home state of California comes to a close and the warm surf is replaced by frigid winter waters with no wet suit to be had..  From there they travel around the globe making stops in Africa, Australia, Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand looking for the best surf the world.  

Without a doubt the surfing in the film is very impressive. Our heroes manage to find something to surf in every location they go to, be it a wave not much bigger than a toaster or the perfect waves at St. Francis Beach in South Africa which seem to have no end.  And while I am sure that this movie could stand on its own as a terrific and straightforward surfing film, it is Brown’s personal flair that truly ingrains the movie into our memories.  

There are countless side quests that find Micheal and Robert being chased by monkeys, seeing how close they can get to a giraffe without it running away, surfing down giant sand dunes, and even experiencing the pitfalls of buying gas at a gas station in Africa called “Agyp.”  All this with no supervision or fences to protect them--the world certainly seemed like a much more relaxed place then.  

The film’s entire soundtrack is performed by a band called The Sandals--reading the name alone is probably enough for you to figure out exactly what their music sounds like--and is narrated entirely by Brown, who delivers every ridiculously cheesy line with such earnestness and contentment that it is impossible to ignore the good vibes stewing in your gut.  

While the movie certainly isn’t a substitute for sitting outside with your friends on a hot day with really cold beers, it certainly comes close and with such an abundance of cold and snow this winter, that is more than enough.

Review of Mother (Madeo)

     

     From South Korean director Jooh-ho Bong comes a movie that plays fast and loose with the noir-murder mystery by replacing its hard boiled P.I. in a fedora and trench coat, with an earthy, medicinal herb selling mother of one with little more to guide her than her maternal instincts and the leverage provided by her promises of free acupuncture.  Set in a small rural town in South Korea, the movie revolves around the brutal murder of a teenage girl.  When the blame is immediately placed on the titular character’s son, a slightly mentally challenged twenty-eight year old whose memory is frustratingly inaccessible, our hero is forced to act. 
     Her search for what she knows is the truth is riveting.  She delves far beneath the seemingly constant lull of the townspeople to discover what all similar towns reveal: lots and lots of teenage promiscuity.  While some strides are made here, we see that our protagonists’ strongest attributes are not her detective abilities--in one embarrassing instance involving a golf club and lipstick we see her detective abilities are rather inept if not totally absent--but her knowledge that stored deep inside her son’s vault like brain are the memories of exactly what transpired the night of the girl’s murder.  Which to her, will undoubtedly prove his innocence.
     On display throughout the film is Joon-ho Bong’s knack for making a film that is beautiful to look at.  He reflects the town’s sullen and melancholy atmosphere perfectly with deliberate camera movements and edits.  He also harnesses Hye-ja Kim’s worn and weary countenance as the mother by rarely ever having the camera shoot her in anything less than a medium close-up.  
     Like Joon-ho Bong’s previous film, The Host, Mother takes a genre we are very familiar with and adds to it terrific weirdness along with a strong message about the importance of family unity.  While both films have these similarities, Mother  differs in that it is a movie about memories: how we categorize them, how we forget them, and ultimately, how we access them (an acupuncture technique, a cell phone, and sometimes, a simple flying kick to the head).