Lee Sung-min

No Other Choice

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Man-su with a heavy plant pot he's ready to drop on someone's head

Park Chan-wook probably hit peak cultural clout with 2003’s Oldboy. No Other Choice reminds us yet again that he’s still here, and has been knocking out good films ever since. If The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave and a clutch of others don’t quite get the coverage that Oldboy and the other two films of the “Vengeance” trilogy did, that’s more our problem than his. In fact Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance would better be described as the “Sympathy” trilogy, since that’s their currency. But in the crazy-busy world of the attention economy Vengeance sells and Sympathy comes across as a bit wafty, so Vengeance it is. Which brings us … Read more

The Beast

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Yoo Jae-myung and Lee Sung-min

You’ve seen the South Korean movie The Beast before even if you haven’t seen it before. It’s a tremendously familiar generic thriller, and in many respects it really is a case of same old same old. That said, it’s well worth checking out if stylish brutality is your thing. The plot is slightly serpentine, as it was in the 2004 French film 36 Quai des Orfèvres (36th Precinct) on which The Beast is partly based, but can be boiled down to this: two cops, once partners, now hungry for promotion to a job that’s about to fall vacant, try to out-compete each other in pursuit of a high-profile killer, using fair means and … Read more