Les Formidables (Movie - 2006)

'A Million' Combines Action, Noir Drama

Source | 2009/07/30 | 0 comments | Permalink |

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

In "A Million", Jo Min-ho offers something brilliantly noir and dramatically stimulating that goes beyond the often scathing or superficial moral laundering that an action-packed thriller tries to rub into the narrative.

How far would one go to win $1 million? In an attempt to answer the question, the movie invites viewers to join its star cast through the lush wilderness of Perth, Australia, an inland island encircled by sea, desert, jungle and river.

The director of "Les Formidables" offers a story about a reality TV show gone awry ― or rather, just as planned in all its hardboiled horror. As expected, it begins with some caricatured characters falling victim to money lust and displaying savage instincts for survival.

Compared to its computer graphics-ridden competitors in the summer box office, the mid-budget film relies less on the art of spectacle. "A Million" is not without its anticlimactic moments and could have spun stronger, m...| More

'Breathless' wins Rotterdam Tiger Award

Source | 2009/02/02 | 0 comments | Permalink |

"Breathless" (Ddongpari) by Korean director and actor Yang Ik-joon won the top prize at the 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam.

"Breathless" shared the Tiger award with two others, Iran's "Be Calm and Count to Seven", directed by Ramtin Lavalfipour and Turkey's "Wrong Rosary", directed by Mahmut Fazil.

"Breathless" was praised by the jury as "a powerfully rendered and acted film with a keen sense of reality in its portrayal of a situation that has been seldom seen in the cinema".

Yang was also given high marks for his sense of warmth and humor dealing with a troubling subject matter.

The film centers around Sang-hoon who gets paid to retrieve lent money. His life changes after he meets Yeon-hee, a high school student. Director Yang himself played the role of Sang-hoon.

For winning, Yang received 15,000 euros ($19,270) and the right to air his piece through the Dutch public TV channel VPRO.

A prominent figure in Korea's independent film industry, Yang, 34, has ...| More

'Seven Days': Fast and Furious

Source | 2008/10/01 | 0 comments | Permalink |

A slick, Hollywood-style thriller will satisfy Kim Yoon-jin fans

Kyu Hyun Kim (qhyunkim)

A hotshot defense lawyer Yu Ji-yeon (Kim Yoon-jin, TV's "Lost") learns to her horror that someone has kidnapped her daughter. Instead of a ransom, the kidnapper demands that Ji-yeon defend a vicious rapist-murderer to an acquittal at an upcoming trial. She has only seven days to locate her daughter, or, conversely, prove that the prosecuted murderer is innocent.

The only help around is her thuggish cop friend (Park Hee-soon, "Boss X File", "Antarctic Journal"), while a corrupt prosecuting attorney (Jeong Dong-hwan) and the victim's headstrong mother (Kim Mi-sook, "Marathon") stand in her way.

"Seven Days" turned out to be the biggest box office draw in the fourth quarter of 2007 in Korea, enthusiastically embraced by the moviegoers, even though critical reaction was more ambivalent. The film's MTV-on-speed editing style and narrative rhythm received some criticism, but I don't feel like...| More

Hansel and Gretel: Lim's Dark Fantasy Opens

Source | 2007/12/26 | 0 comments | Permalink |

Director Lim Pil-seong is back with his second feature, Hansel and Gretel, a fantasy-horror loosely based on the famous Brothers Grimm's fairy tale and updated to modern day Korea. While his debut feature "Antarctic Journal" (2005) placed a group of men in an icy, barren polar landscape, where the human psyche preys on itself, in "Hansel and Gretel", director Lim uses a strange forest and house to explore even deeper recesses of the psyche and imagination.

It stars Cheon Jeong-myeong ("Les Formidables") as the Hansel figure, Eun Won-jae and Sim Eun-Kyeong. Cheon plays Eun-soo, a man who, while left wandering on a country road after an accident, meets a mysterious young girl and is led to her house in the middle of the forest. There, he meets her siblings and parents who live a fairytale-like life, eating cakes and sweets. The next day, when Eun-soo tries to leave, the forest brings him back again and he soon realizes he is trapped with the girl and her siblings who never age. Th...| More

A story held hostage to camera tricks

Source | 2006/08/22 | 0 comments | Permalink |

It is probably every film director's nightmare to tell a story that's already been told before (especially one that's been told better). It's that fear that is behind the bad habit of many directors to omit or manipulate critical parts of their narratives, opting for cinematic cliches over straightforward explanations.
Sure, there's no one proper way to tell a story. Yet in films such as "Gangjeok" (Les Formidables), the editing is so choppy that by the time the closing credits start rolling you wonder whether everything you just saw was completely delusional.
It's understandable why the director Jo Min-ho had to take this approach. Drama overwhelms the film, which is about a strung-out cop who is taken hostage by an escaped inmate of a prison.
Sung-woo (played by Park Joong-hoon) is desperately trying to pay for an operation for his sick son; Su-hyun (Cheon Jeong-myeon) eats broken pieces of his lunch plate in prison to protest that he was falsely accused of a murder charge. He esc...| More