Day: August 6, 2015

LFM Reviews Assassination

By Joe Bendel. Judging from Ahn Okyun’s experiences, the Korean resistance was a lot like the French underground. Traitors from within were a far greater threat than efforts to root them out. In fact, the greatest threat to her mission comes from the turncoat who recruited her in the first place in Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination, which opens this Friday in New York.

Ahn was born in Korea, but she never lived there. Her nanny managed to save her when her collaborating dog of a father had her loyalist mother killed. She grew up as part of the free Korean diaspora, becoming a sniper in the Korean Independence Army, despite her spectacles. In contrast, her twin sister lived a life of luxury bought and paid for with blood money. Never really knowing her father, she has no reservations about assassinating him. Hopefully, she will also be able to take out Kawaguchi, the local Japanese commander, who happens to be responsible for the death of her adopted mother.

To complicate matters, Captain Yem, the supposed hero of the provisional government is actually working with the Japanese to undermine the plot he was ordered to launch. Initially, he entrusts the job to a notorious outlaw known as Hawaii Pistol, but the gun-for-hire is about to have his Casablanca moment. Remember that bit about Ahn being a twin? It will be significant.

Fifty-one different flavors of vintage firearms were used in the making of Assassination, which should instill confidence in its action scenes—and rightly so. Even though Choi’s screenplay is chocked full of Shakespearean elements—betrayal, grudges, twins separated by circumstances—the action quota and body count are closer to old school John Woo. It is sort of like Melville’s Army of Night, but with all the existential angst replaced with adrenaline-charged shootouts.

Action director Yu Sang-seop pulls out all the stops down the stretch, delivering a centerpiece spectacle that is truly a thing of beautiful carnage. The entire third act is a non-stop ballet of gunfire, but Choi ends it with some stone cold operatic payback. This is the kind of film that turns fans onto Asian action movies in the first place.

From "Assassination."

Lee Jung-jae is terrifically loathsome as Yem and Ha Jung-woo’s Hawaii Pistol certainly holds up his end during the action sequences, but Gianna Jun commands the film from start to finish. She was great in Choi’s The Thieves, but this is another level up for her as an action lead. She looks like a natural firing the Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, but she also expresses the sort emotional turmoil you would expect from an orphan, whose family relationships are about to get considerably more complicated.

Assassination somehow runs a robust one hundred thirty-nine minutes, but they are a lean, mean one hundred thirty-nine minutes. It feels drastically shorter, because most of the time is devoted to action and the relatively quiet moments are used for some pretty effective intrigue. For action fans, this is the good stuff. Very highly recommended, Assassination opens this Friday (8/7) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on August 6th, 2015 at 5:38pm.

LFM Reviews Around That Winter

From "Around That Winter."

By Joe Bendel. Years ago, someone long since forgotten said it takes a village to raise a child. If that’s so, there are some drastically unbalanced villages raising kids in China. In the provinces, it is not uncommon to find villages only populated by the very old, the very young, and the very weird due to economic migration. Such is the case with the home town of one big city resident in Wang Xiaozhen’s Around That Winter, which screens as part of Cinema on the Edge, a retrospective tribute to the Beijing Independent Film Festival launching in New York at Anthology Film Archives.

Independent film, meaning that produced without the government’s explicit sanction, is flat-out illegal in China. The government also exerts strict control over exhibitors, as well. About the only way for maverick filmmakers to show their work was through independent festivals, like the Beijing Independent. It had been harassed since its inception, but the government forcibly shuttered the short-lived yet venerable institution in 2014. Clearly, this was a way to silence political dissent. However, it also stifles films that are experimental or stylistically idiosyncratic. Wang’s naturalistic yet slightly absurdist Winter is a perfect example of the latter.

This should be an eventful homecoming for Xiaozhen, since his significant other, Zhou Qing, would be meeting his parents for the first time, except they are not there. Whatever they do, they need to do it somewhere else to make any sort of money that way. It is not clear how long the couple will wait for them, but it could definitely be considered a lost weekend. They will drink, smoke, bicker, and have make-up sex amid the mean shabbiness of the crumbling village. Their only company will be his senile grandmother; Yongshun, his spectacularly foul-mouthed little nephew; Zige, an even younger and still innocent niece; and Xiaozhen’s childhood friend, who is clearly a little off.

To put it uncharitably, the three ostensive adults basically lay about while the youngsters run wild. Ideologically speaking, Winter should hardly constitute a great threat to the People’s Republic. However, the necessity of peeing in a crumbling masonry ruin of an outhouse while a socially stunted perv peeks through the cracks might not be the propaganda image the regime is trying to project.

Nevertheless, there is something bizarrely anesthetizing about Wang’s severe black-and-white vision. Strictly speaking, not a lot happens, but it is all pretty suggestive of a state of malaise. In truth, the relationship between Xiaozhen and Zhou is one of the most complicated and contentious you will see on screen, while still being functional. As her namesake, Zhou Qing gives a remarkably earthy and spirited performance, zestfully playing off the more reserved helmer, playing a fictionalized (to some extent) analog of himself.

Winter is an interesting film to help open Cinema on the Edge, along with Luo Li’s even colder and more cerebral Emperor Visits the Hell. Wang’s film is not exactly welcoming, but it is accessible, like a Raymond Carver story adapted by Hong Sang-soo. Recommended for those with a taste for the intimate and the off-kilter, Around That Winter screens tomorrow (8/7) and Tuesday (8/11) as part of Cinema on the Edge at Anthology Film Archives.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 6th, 2015 at 5:38pm.