Notable Cast: Lee
Byung-hun, Kang Dong-won, Kim Woo-bin, Uhm Ji-won, Oh Dal-su, Jin Kyung
At this point, the South Korean market is so good at making
thrillers that it’s setting the bar too high for them to even keep up. Master is the victim of that bar
standard. If this film was made in Hollywood, it was easily be one of the best
that Hollywood has made this year if not in the last handful of years and yet,
compared to the two kinds of thrillers that South Korea is producing, it feels
occasionally disjointed and safe.
Master tries to be
a complex socio-political-economic thriller as it takes two heroes and pits
them against a financial criminal mastermind, played with impressive swagger by
Lee Byung-hun, who is running a massive pyramid scheme. This is problematic,
outside of being ambitious, because it’s very dense material. A plethora of
various characters, two leads, and enough plot to make two movies. Two movies
that are jammed into one. The first hour is purely set up, but it’s built like
its own film and reaches a natural climax and everything. The second half then
jumps ahead six months (or more, as memory seems to escape me at this moment)
and proceeds to build an entirely new plot where our leads must re-team up to
find the baddie AGAIN and hunt him down. It’s a ballsy maneuver for the film,
but it’s a lot to consume for a two and half hour piece of cinema. Respect, for
sure, but also not perhaps the most efficient maneuver when both pieces could
have been fantastic films on their own. On top of that, the film is neither the
dark and ambitious thriller nor the overly entertaining and hammy ones that
South Korea is known for producing. It tries to be both and in that effort,
does go far enough in either direction. For many fans, this riding the line
will be wonderful for consumption, but ultimately for this reviewer it felt
like they didn’t want to make a choice one way or the other and it’s a tad
disappointing.
Notable Cast: Jung
Woo-sung, Lee Beom-soo, Ahn Sung-ki, Kim In-kwon, Lee Si-young, Ahn Gil-kang,
Lee Do-keong, Choi Jin-hyuk
“The real game starts
now.”
We’ve been big advocates for the South Korean domination of the thriller genre
over the last decade or so, but at some point it seems reasonable to figure it will come to
an end. What goes up must come down, as the old adage goes. Yet, it doesn’t
even feel like the trend of South Korea putting out stellar film after stellar film is
stopping…and if anything, they are getting crazier with their films in attempts
to keep it fresh. The Divine Move is the perfect example. If you took
one part 70s revenge thriller, spliced it with an action heist flick, injected
it with a board game drama, and rolled it in some Oldboy, then you have
a bit of an idea on what The Divine Move has to offer. It’s crazy, but
it’s also well done.
For Tae-seok (Jung Woo-sung), being blamed for his brother’s
murder is not the only thing on his mind. It’s vengeance. His brother is dead
and he has to find retribution for the act, but his Go skills are only going to
get him so far to find the head of the gambling ring responsible. He’s going to
need fighting skills. He’s going to need a team to help him set up the perfect
trap.
Face off.
As the saturation point continues to grow, it was only time
before South Korea would start going to some crazy places to keep their
thrillers feeling fresh. Initially, I wasn’t hyped for this film despite its
intriguing premise. I am not familiar with the game Go that the film uses as
its basis and metaphor for the various plot progressions and it seemed like a
reach that they could somehow make an action thriller around that. Even without
an essential understanding of the game, The
Divine Move makes impactful use of the film tropes of the various genres to
get the film moving. It might have helped that I understood the terminology and
how some of the moves in the game worked for the plot, but director Jo Bum-gu
does a pretty admirable job at expressing the tension, fear, and excitement
without it.
With the Go aspect handled shockingly well, The Divine Move focuses its energy in
various other directions…and genres. The film might be driven by a character
with a revenge basis against the vicious illegal gambling ring, but the film itself is
built more like a team heist flick. In many ways, The Divine Move feels like a sort of sister film to another Korean
heist flick The Thieves, in
particular how it builds its team of players out of gimmicks – but gimmicks
that play off as heartfelt and honest. In particular, a blind Go player known
as Drinking Christ (played with both humor and honesty by Ahn Sung-ki) steals
damn near every scene. What should have been a broad stroke character is
crafted with careful attention to character detail and that kind of work pays
off for the entire film.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of The Divine Move is not in its well-executed thriller elements or
its well-developed character interactions, but in its shockingly excellent
action set pieces. While the film is grounded as a thriller, punctuated with
dramatic and comedic bits, there are some impressive action bits added to the
mix that work really well. Tae-seok learns to fight in the film thanks to his
prison cohorts, and the film builds some moments into the script to utilize the
hand to hand combat moments. This is highlighted by a ridiculously awesome knife
fight in the final act between our hero and the main tattooed villain of the
picture. Seriously, how come no one else does knife fights as awesome as South
Korean films? They even managed to stuff one into a heist thriller. It shows up
with a resounding “fuck yeah” for action fans.
New meaning to the term "ice box."
To be honest, The
Divine Move shouldn’t work with all of the genre mixing that it does. Lucky
for cinephiles, the execution of this movie is only of the highest caliber. The
humor works, the suspense works, the gaming elements work, the action works,
and the cast chemistry is astounding. This is the kind of out of left field
film that always feels like a prize and it only comes with the highest
recommendation from us. Do yourself a favor, ignore the outlandish concept and
just dive into the violent world of Go gambling with this film. It’s worth the
bet.
Notable Cast: Jang Dong-gun, Kim Min-hee, Brian Tee, Kim
Hee-won, Kim Joon-seong
I think at this point it is safe to say that director Lee
Jeong-beom is the next John Woo. His last film, The Man from Nowhere,
brought me down like a man slit at the ankle tendons with a knife. It was a
spectacular action flick to say the least. His follow up, No Tears for the
Dead, is of a similar vein and in similar caliber – pun fully intended.
It’s not quite as good as the previously mentioned film, but that doesn’t mean
that it’s not a hellaciously awesome action flick.
Gon (Jang Dong-gun) works as a hitman for a family in the
US, but when his most recent hit goes awry and he ends up killing a little girl
his cohorts send him off to Seoul to find the mother and get rid of her too.
Upon arrival though, he finds himself too guilt stricken to be unable to finish
the job. This, like always, makes it tough as various other killers are sent to
finish it…and him.
You would think you would plug the ear closest to the gun, no?
The John Woo reference in the opening is there for a reason.
Namely because No Tears for the Dead fits right in with the heroic
bloodshed and ‘killer with a conscious’ plot he loved to use with his mainstay
actor Chow Yun Fat. Thusly, if you love films like The Killer or even
the John Woo-esque The Replacement Killers then this is a must see, must
have, must watch on repeat kind of film for you. The intent is most certainly
there to be associated with those kinds of films.
Outside of the plot that we have seen before in a hundred
other action movies, No Tears for the Dead is a proficient study in how
to take deep character work and balance it with ferocious action set pieces.
The film moves with an interesting structure as it is almost cut into two
parts. The first part is all about the character and plot build. Seriously,
outside of the opening hit and one (might I add extraordinarily badass) car
wreck the first hour is dedicated to crafting the foundational plot of the
film. Jang Dong-gun and Kim Min-hee both possess a strong ability to craft subtle
acting with the rather broad stroke plot progressions of the script and
director Lee has a real knack for keeping the visuals and color palettes varied
and effective to make sure that the audience never loses focus. They know it’s
going to be an hour before we start to pick up the energy so they do everything
in their power to make it worth it.
That's a good look on him.
The second hour is damn near wholly dedicated to
unrelentless ass kicking. This is the truthful highlight of this film and boy,
oh boy, is it a highlight. Gun battles, hand to hand combat, a brief knife
fight, a few explosions, and the ever awesome Brian Tee as our counter villain
for Jang Dong-gun to face off against. The violence is extreme in a lot of the
moments – there is a knee to the head of a gentleman that might be one of the
most brutal things you see this year – and there is plenty of gore to spurt out
with it. It works both from an action junkie standpoint and from the cinephile
standpoint that is thanks to the generous character beats in the first half and
a few key moments to bring our heroes and villains full circle.
Peek a boo!
If you saw and loved The Man from Nowhere or simply
love the heroic bloodshed films from John Woo, then No Tears for the Dead
comes with only the highest recommendations. It’s not quite as proficient at
the same aspects of Lee Jeong-beom’s last film, but it’s still a massively
entertaining and well-built action machine featuring some stellar performances
and badass anti-heroics. No Tears for the Dead comes with a massive
Blood Brothers splatter of approval.
