An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Park Chan-wook and since it had been very well received, I was really eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, I was actually surprised by how little I cared about the damned thing after all. While watching this movie, it reminded me of ‘Le couperet’, an obscure French comedy directed by Costa-Gavras which I saw years ago, and, indeed, it turned out that it was adapted from the very same book. ‘Le couperet’ was not amazing either but, at least, it was a decent dark comedy and, being French myself, I could completely identify with the main character and what he was going through. Furthermore, in spite of its flaws, Costa-Gavras’s movie was a super sharp satire of the dark realities of the French economy at the time. Unfortunately, with Park Chan-wook’s version, I have no idea about the economic situation in South Korea so it never felt sharp or funny to me. A bigger issue was that I felt very little connection with the characters involved, especially the main character. I’m not blaming Lee Byung-hun, he was actually pretty good but I have to admit that, for some reason, I had a hard time to disassociate him from his character in ‘Squid Game’ which I saw not so long ago. His wife was played by the lovely Son Ye-jin and she was not bad either but I just didn’t care much for their couple. At the end of the day, it felt like watching a pathetic guy killing a bunch of other pathetic guys in order to get his dream job which turned out to be pretty pathetic as well and, as far as I was concerned, the end-result was never really interesting or entertaining to behold. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work for me, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Park Chan-wook’s work. 

6/10