Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. Intimacy is based on trust, so is it ever really possible in police state like Soviet-era East Germany? Obviously, that is not the Stasi’s problem. They are out to do everything possible to isolate and demoralize a dissident doctor. Yet, in spite of her better judgment, she will develop ambiguously complicated feelings for her minder in Christian Petzold’s Barbara, Germany’s official best foreign language Academy Award submission, which screens during the 50th New York Film Festival.

As soon as Dr. Barbara Wolff applied for an exit visa, her brilliant career was effectively over. Transferred from a prestigious East Berlin hospital to a provincial backwater, Dr. Wolff is all too aware of the eyes on her. The most obvious set belongs to Andre, Barbara’s ostensive supervisor, whose role as the designated Stasi snitch is an open secret. He has a surprisingly convincing good guy act, though, and he definitely seems to care about their patients – particularly Mario, a young man suffering from a mysterious head trauma that defies diagnosis. Yet, the case that resonates deepest with Dr. Wolff is that of Stella, a recaptured prison camp escapee suffering from meningitis.

Wolff is not inclined to meekly submit to the Stasi’s mounting harassment. Having hatched an escape plan with her West German lover, she believes her time in East Germany is limited, which is why she is so surprised by her growing attraction to Andre and her emotional investment in their patients.

Barbara has been described as Petzold’s response to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s brilliant The Lives of Others. That is true to an extent, but not in a polemical sense. There is no nostalgia here for the Honecker regime, let alone a defense. Petzold’s parents made the flight to freedom Dr. Wolff is anticipating, so he is understandably sensitive to the everyday tribulations endured by East Germans. Indeed, the film is best at conveying the guarded nature required for even the most prosaic of conversations and the jarring sound of that dreaded knock in the night.

Barbara Wolff easily represents Nina Hoss’s best performance to reach our shores.  Outwardly diffident but profoundly uneasy beneath her facade, the good doctor might be the best woman’s lead role of the year (and most years prior).  It is a tricky proposition to convey her character’s roiling inner turmoil as well as her concerted efforts masking it from the world, but Hoss pulls it off remarkably. Former East German Ronald Zehrfield also helps complicate audiences’ emotional responses as the flawed but perhaps still idealistic Andre, who might also be a victim himself, in that manner unique to captive citizens of police states.

Exercising a masterful control of mood and ambient sound, Petzold vividly recreates a sense of life in the GDR, in all its oppressive austerity. It is a lean, tense narrative, yet Petzold derives much of the suspense from within his characters rather than through external cloak-and-daggering. A very accomplished film featuring Oscar-worthy work from Hoss, Barbara is very highly recommended when it screens this coming Monday (10/1), next Saturday (10/6), and the following Tuesday (10/9) as a main slate selection of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on September 28th, 2012 at 1:22pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is like the Joseon-era equivalent of the eighteen minute gap in the Watergate tapes. Fifteen days of King Gwanghae’s official court history mysteriously disappeared. There was a fair bit of intrigue afoot during that period, but the king missed most of it. It is his double who briefly tends to matters of state in Choo Chang-min’s Masquerade, which opens today in select cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

When Gwanghae first assumed the throne, there was great hope for his reign. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a capricious ruler. Sound familiar? At least in early seventeenth century Korea, there were worse alternatives. Given the unsavory nature of his rivals in court, his loyal Chief Secretary Heo Gyun opts for full cover-up mode when the king is incapacitated by a life-threatening mickey. Already employing look-alike actor Ha-seon as the King’s double on a limited basis, Heo Gyun installs him on the throne full time until the royal doctor nurses the king back to health.

Ha-seon knows little about the issues of the day, but his fundamental decency leads him to make better decisions than had been coming from Gwanghae of late. Trying to make nice with the beautiful Queen Consort, he starts doing those little things, like ending her brother’s torturous inquisition. Of course, these edicts only further antagonize the conspirators who brought about Ha-seon’s impersonation in the first place.

Essentially, Masquerade is the Korean costume drama version of Dave, but the stakes are higher for everyone involved. Obviously, not everybody will make it through the picture alive. The only questions are how high will the body count be and will it include the secret social climber Ha-seon?

In his first true period piece, action star Lee Byung-hun (internationally recognizable for G.I. Joe and I Saw the Devil) handles the dual role of king and clown rather well. He is convincingly imperious as Gwanghae and not terribly shticky as the in-over-his-head Ha-seon. However, it is the supporting cast that really shines, particularly Ryoo Seung-ryong (scary good in War of the Arrows), whose hardnosed Heo Gyun personifies steely gravitas. Likewise, Jang Gwang’s understated turn as Chief Eunuch Jo really sneaks up on viewers. Han Hyo-joo makes the most of the underwritten Queen Consort role, but Shim Eun-kyung really lowers the dramatic boom as Sawol, the young taster who awakens the conscience of the pretend king.

Costume designer Kwon Yoo-jin’s colorful threads look appropriately rich and finely wrought – but Choo is not overawed by the trappings of royalty, largely narrowing his focus to the micro human tribulations rather than the macro geo-politics. While there is more backstabbing than swordplay in Masquerade, it should still satisfy the entire spectrum of period action and romance audiences. Recommended for fans of Korean epic historicals, Masquerade opens today (9/21) in New York at the AMC Empire and in L.A. at the CGV Cinemas, courtesy of CJ Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 21st, 2012 at 12:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. Power corrupts and the pursuit of power corrupts just as absolutely. This is the lesson an ancient mystery man has for a pompous scholar and his students, startled while paying their respects in the first Han Emperor’s tomb. He will tell them the real story of the Hongmen Banquet and the struggle to succeed the fallen Qin Dynasty in Daniel Lee’s mistitled White Vengeance (trailer here), which is now available on DVD and Blu-ray today from Well Go USA.

The tyrannical Qin Emperor is dead and nobody misses him, least of all Han leader Liu Bang and Chu nobleman Xiang Yu, rival generals who forged an uneasy alliance against the Qin. Of course, the emperor’s death prompts a rather obvious question: who will succeed him? Fearing for his own neck, the caretaker emperor decrees the first to control the Qin capitol of Xianyang wins the throne, hoping to play the warriors against each other. It works.

As sworn brothers turned bitter rivals, there are still a lot of unresolved issues between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, particularly concerning the royal consort Yu Ji, the latter’s lover entrusted to the former for safekeeping. Among many things, Vengeance is an elegantly austere, almost chaste, love triangle.

There is also plenty of period warfighting in Vengeance, rendered with grit and scope. Lee is definitely in his element staging huge clashes of armies. He really shows viewers exactly what it means to be outflanked and why it is a bad thing. Yet, the film’s real battle is that between the military strategists, Xiang Yu’s longtime family advisor Fan Zeng and the freelance Obiwan Zhang Liang, who sides with his rival because of Liu Bang’s professed lack of ambition. When the two counselors match wits during a game of weiqi, the stakes are significant and bloody.

Boasting an all-star HK and Chinese cast, Vengeance features memorable supporting performances from top to bottom. Not surprisingly, Anthony Wong dominates the film as the blind but all-seeing Fan Zeng, instantly bringing the gravitas necessary for the cunning yet classically tragic figure. Still, as the crafty Zhang Liang, Hanyu Zhang holds his own with the recognizable Johnnie To veteran.

Unfortunately, neither Feng Shaofeng nor Leon Lai displays the same commanding screen presence as the rival generals. Actually, they are rather bland. In contrast, Jordan Chan packs quite the late inning punch as Han loyalist Fan Kuai, while (Crystal) Liu Yifei is appropriately orchid-like as Yu Ji, but she also makes the most of a bigtime dramatic close-up down the stretch.

Lee rather dexterously shifts viewer sympathies in ways that might even be considered subversive. Indeed, there is definitely a point in Vengeance about the high cost of taking and keeping power. What they say about good intentions still holds true. An ambitious historical epic with plenty of action, White Vengeance is recommended with considerable enthusiasm for fans of Hong Kong cinema. It releases today (9/4) on DVD and Blu-ray from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:32pm.

By Joe Bendel. Safety first, kids. Remember, you never know what some psychopath could sneak into your helmet, so you are better off not wearing one – regardless of how recklessly you might race through the city’s streets. One biker turned messenger learns this the hard way in Jo Bum-gu’s Quick, which releases today on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

In 2004, Han Ki-su broke up rather spectacularly with his girlfriend, Choon-sim. It is a heck of a pile-up. Seven years later, she has reinvented herself as Ah-rom, the lead singer of an up-and-coming girl group, while he has de-invented himself as motorbike deliveryman. Still fearless on a bike, Han delivers a bomb for a mysterious client unaware of its contents. There will be more where that came from. Unfortunately, his ex Ah-rom will become a part of the madness when she books Han to whisk her off to a gig. Putting on his helmet, she sees a rather ominous countdown clock where there shouldn’t be one. As the voice on Han’s cell phone explains, he has thirty minutes to make a series of deliveries or the helmet goes boom.

While Quick owes an obvious debt of inspiration to Speed, it could also be considered the motorized forerunner to Premium Rush – but with a more talented cast. There will be plenty of breakneck weaving through traffic and unlikely Evel Knievel jumps. There is also a yakuza backstory to the mad bomber’s crime spree so convoluted, even the cops can’t keep it straight. For stunt driving, though, Quick is hard to beat. The hospitalized stuntmen seen visited by cast members during the closing credits can attest to that.

Granted, Kang Ye-won is considerably less annoying than Sandra Bullock, but her character’s initial diva act is a bit cringy for a while. If nothing else, having a bomb attached to your head ought to inspire clarity of thought. Still, she looks good in vinyl as her character eventually settles in and gets serious.

Frankly, the humor in Quick is rather broad and does not travel well. Fortunately, Lee Min-ki never goes for laughs as Han, mostly brooding like a rebel without a cause, except when he is raging against their tormentor. As biker movie protagonists go, he is pretty good really. However, since the identity of the evil mastermind is kept secret until well into the third act, Quick does not have a lot of moustache-twisting villainy.

To recap, Quick has a whole lot of explosions and chase scenes. It is also nice to see the fim’s shout out to the stunt personnel, given the rate the Korean film industry chews them up and spits them out (at least according to stuntman-filmmaker Jung Byung-gil’s documentary Action Boys, which screened at NYAFF four years ago). Never lacking adrenaline, Quick is easily recommended for action fans. It is now available at most online retailers from Shout Factory.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:30pm.