[yasr_overall_rating]
Homicide detective Geon-soo Go is having a hard day: in less than 24 hours, he receives a divorce notice from his wife, his mother passes away, and along with his coworkers, he becomes the focus of a police investigation over alleged embezzlement. And that’s just the beginning…
South Korean filmmakers have been steadily emerging into the worldwide spotlight within the past decade or so. Directors such as Joon-ho Bong (“The Host,” “Snowpiercer”), Chan-wook Park (“Oldboy”) and Ki-duk Kim (“Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring”), just to name a few, have had international festival recognition and box-office success, due to their distinct perspectives that defy conventional narrative structures and blend accessibility with artistic (and, at times, wonderfully bizarre) flourishes.
That novel approach to filmmaking – call it the SoKo movement – feels like a breath of fresh air in an age of cinematic regurgitation, filled with remakes, sequels, prequels and re-imaginings (in fact, “Oldboy” has already been “reimagined” by Spike Lee, for some odd reason that no one understood). Whether “A Hard Day” will propel its writer/director Seong-hoon Kim to join that auteur movement remains to be seen, but this sophomore effort certainly marks the filmmaker as “one to watch.”
In a way, of all the aforementioned titles, “A Hard Day” comes closest to mimicking Hollywood’s traditional approach to a high-concept thriller, yet it skillfully avoids the usual trappings – excessive sentimentality, excessive heroism, and, well, excess. An exercise in prolonged tension, the film wisely adopts a minimalist approach: a relatable character, a short time frame, and a domino-like sequence of events that progressively pulls the protagonist – Detective Go – into a nightmarish, almost “Fargo”-esque, cobweb of intrigue.
The film starts off at “pedal-to-the-metal” speed: Go, driving tipsy from a funeral gathering, smashes into a man on the highway. Panic-stricken, he stuffs the body into the trunk of his car, barely avoiding the cops at the last moment, and drives right into a DUI checkpoint. As the plot unravels further, Go’s former extortions surface, turning his partners against him; and a mysterious caller comes into play, claiming he witnessed Go’s murder.
Some of the intricate ways Go gets out of ostensibly impossible situations are ingenious, particularly one involving a remote-controlled G.I. Joe action figure and a few yellow balloons; or a scene where Go deliberately drives his car into a police vehicle, in order to seem innocent. Other memorable moments include a giant block of cement unexpectedly smashing a car into a pancake, and a particularly well-timed explosion towards the end… To reveal anything else would be a major disservice to the film’s many breathless twists and turns. Let’s just say, “A Hard Day” proves Edward Murphy’s ol’ adage, that if anything can go wrong, it will – though it does end on a much-needed note of redemption (or is it truly redemption?).
The seemingly convoluted plot is easy to follow, laid out in brisk, suspenseful sequences that, granted, sometimes verge on the ridiculous, such as the extended – and very loud – office bathroom brawl that, of course, no one heard, or a pointless “dream recap” of events, or numerous little plot holes riddling the script… But none of it matters in the moment, nor does it prevent the film from achieving its primary goal – to shock, startle and intermittently induce outbursts of laughter for over 100 minutes. “A Hard Day”, bound to soon be remade by some Hollywood hack, falls neatly into the category of unusual and entertaining South Korean cinema, and will hopefully pave the way for more features from that highly creative part of the world.
Opens Friday July 17th in New York at Village East Cinemas with a national release to follow by KINO LORBER
