***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Choi Min-sik, Ji-Tae Yu, Hye-Jeong Kang, and Byeong-ok Kim
Directed by Chanwook Park & written by Park, Chun-hyeong Lim, Joon-hyung Lim, Jo-yun Hwang, and Garon Tsuchiya
2003 (2005 US release)
120 min R
Not for the faint-of-heart, but a must-see for movie fans who like their flicks brutal and relentless. Bloody teeth and hammers fly in this deliriously insane and darkly humorous collision of Kafka, Hitchcock, Greek tragedy, “The Prisoner,” disco, and self-conscious, hyper-techno direction. Surly and drunken businessman Dae-Su Oh (Choi Min-sik) is imprisoned for 15 years for reasons no one will explain to him. When he is freed, he emerges from a suitcase, dressed in a designer suit, and powered by martial arts skills learned from watching TV and years spent punching his wall. He sets out to get his questions answered and exact his revenge on the baby-faced maniac Woo-jin Lee (Ji-Tae Yu), waiting at the end. He is a changed man when he is released; once a sniveling loudmouth, he is now stoic, silent, and eager to endure solid walls of pain.
Korean director Chanwook Park (“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”) uses every trick in the book and tells his revenge-on-revenge tale in wild colors, freeze frames, changing frame rates, and just general weirdness. He gets uncomfortable, eye-covering, “Oh God no!” laughs from things like teeth extraction. There’s a huge group fist-fight done in a single side-scrolling long take, like a video game, except with pauses for Oh to double over and pant. It’s probably the year’s best fight scene. The movie has a fetish for teeth: not only do they come out, but Oh dispatches two bad guys with a broken toothbrush. And, for once, the explanation that comes at the end of all this weirdness does not disappoint.
Although “Oldboy” has its share of tongue-in-cheek violence, it is also a sincere picture. The wife and I were exhilarated when “Oldboy” was finished, but also sad, bewildered. This is the first Korean picture I’ve seen and, not surprisingly, it combines Asian cinema’s fascination with “honorable” violence with Korean Catholicism. The motive of Oh’s tormenter is somewhere between revenge and a need for compassionate understanding. “Compassion” means “to suffer with;” he wants someone to understand his pain, even if he himself is not strong enough to admit this. Good stuff.
Back to home.
** (out of ****)
Starring Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Thandie Newton, Larenz Tate, Ryan Phillippe, Keith David, and Terrence Howard
Directed by Paul Haggis & written by Haggis and Robert Moresco
2004 (2005 wide release)
112 min R
Overwritten, overwritten, overwritten. “Crash” has the kind of screenplay that some executive read and thought was “brilliant!” not realizing that it was so brilliant that it didn’t actually need to be filmed. There is hardly an idea, thought, or plot point in “Crash” that isn’t conveyed by dialogue. What is this, a play? An episode of “Law & Order?” From Don Cheadle’s opening ramble (which includes the phrase “frame of reference” at least twice—a sure sign of a screenwriter who thinks “more writing” equals “better writing”) to one unnatural, absurdly eloquent diatribe after another, this movie is nothing but walking and talking. Did you like that last sentence I just wrote? Parenthesis, hyphens, quotation marks, and commas—pretty convoluted. That’s how everyone in “Crash” talks!
Substantively I have fewer issues with “Crash.” If it weren’t so ridiculously mouthy, it could probably keep every single scene and still be a good movie. I can’t see how it could ever be a great movie; the kudos it has received from so many critics is probably a result of its blinding gloss of “Controversy!” and “Importance!” Basically in the first half of the movie, just about everyone is a horrible racist, attributing the worst racial motives to everyone else she meets. Then in the second half, everyone sees past her prejudices during a moment of crisis. And that’s about it. (One character starts good and turns bad, just for variety’s sake.)
There are some interesting bits involving Terrence Howard of “Hustle & Flow” as a dapper, light-skinned black man who doesn’t act “black” enough. As a not-terribly-manly-man, I’m fascinated/frightened by the largely arbitrary pressures of masculinity, and recognize that African-American males are often pressured to be hyper-masculine. And I also liked the bits with Don Cheadle, simply because Don Cheadle is always so bloody likeable.
“Crash” is mostly the work of director/co-screenwriter Paul Haggis, who penned Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby.” He gave that movie, you will remember, a largely unnecessary voiceover narration from Morgan Freeman. Haggis has taken a huge and talented cast and put no faith in them to convey anything except with words.
Finished Saturday, January 7th, 2006
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