[HanCinema's Film Review] "Hwayi : A Monster Boy"

The accidental family is a heavily romanticized trope- even if a kid was born into less than ideal circumstances, he's still got a chance as long as there's love, right? "Hwayi : A Monster Boy" takes this concept to a strange extreme, as its title character (played by Yeo Jin-goo) clearly experiences plenty of love on a day-to-day basis. But the film doesn't flinch from showing us that his surrogate family is astonishingly cruel and brutal.

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The troubling part about Hwai's family is that they're not evil. Well, not all of them anyway. But this gang has no moral scruples. They only kill when necessary, but given that the profession of choice for these men is to run around stealing stuff that doesn't belong to them, situations that involve necessary killing come up all the time. And yet they all still genuinely love Hwai, and have instructed their surrogate son in the various arts and trades they consider to be their life's work. Exactly how much use does a teenage boy have for hand-to-hand combat, sniping, and crazy movie driving skills? Very little except to engage in a life of crime- and yet his family seem less interested in Hwai's future than they are in just making sure he inherits their skills.

In practically the same breath as this familial bonding, though, "Hwayi : A Monster Boy" makes a point to remind its audience that certain traumas are basically permanent even when the shackles are removed. And that just because a father figure is well-meaning doesn't mean his advice or motivations are necessarily good or wise. The movie makes a pointed effort both to encourage and lambast the viewer in regards to giving these criminals the benefit of the doubt.

This result in a very messy, complicated narrative. Its extremely ambivalent take on the origin and sustaining of family life begs a lot of uncomfortable questions. For all its exotic action thriller setpieces, it's unmistakable that, uplifting film narratives notwithstanding, there are plenty of people in real life who decide they are capable of raising a kid based on selfish motives and end up creating progeny with similar emotional cascades.

In term of the quality of the setpieces, "Hwayi : A Monster Boy" ranges from average to good. The action is tense, and has several clever ideas, but the presentation lacks a touch I would consider particularly masterful. However, considering the scenes mainly as placeholders and facilitators to the film's stronger emotional conflicts, they serve their purpose well. The storyline as a whole is reasonably difficult to predict, and the spontaneous chaos that leads into each action sequence well reflects the emotional turmoil of the main character.

The movie's major flaw is the unfortunate implications regarding its women characters. I can accept that two of the three are shattered shells of human beings- that makes some contextual sense. But the third is basically pointless and not well-integrated into Hwai's emotional journey, though she does serve an obvious role there. The film inspires ambivalence in the viewer similar to that which its main character feels. In this sense "Hwayi : A Monster Boy" is a definite success- but be well-advised that this is a film that requires deliberate thought to fully appreciate, and even then, the presentation isn't quite strong enough to reach artform.

Review by William Schwartz

"Hwayi : A Monster Boy" is directed by Jang Joon-hwan and features Kim Yun-seok and Yeo Jin-goo.