gridlock Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Over My Dead Body
(Seisi Seisi Seisapsei,
死屍死時四十四)

Director – Ho Cheuk Tin – 2022 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 119m

Confronted with a naked corpse, the residents of three separate flats in a tower block try to get shot of it before its discovery can reduce their apartments’ selling prices – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 21st

One of two films about living in a high rise released this week.

Hong Kong movies have a long tradition of knockabout and very silly comedy which are something of an acquired taste. Many of them are enjoyable enough. This particular entry, however, doesn’t travel outside the Hong Kong Chinese culture very well. To an English, non-Cantonese speaker, it doesn’t really work, coming over largely as irritating. (I suspect that, for Cantonese speakers, it may well play far more successfully.)

Half watching a TV show on his dashboard phone about the problems Hong Kongers face around ever-escalating real estate prices, Ming To (Wong You Nam from Ip Man, Wilson Yip, 2008) makes the journey in his VW van through gridlocked traffic, past the building’s SG (security guard) Lee (Sheung-ching Lee) of the tower block Seaside Heights to Flat 14A and the bedroom of sexy air stewardess Yana Chung (Jennifer Yu Heung-Ying from Shadows, Glenn Chan, Bure Li, 2020; Tracey, Jun Li, 2018) for some horizontal refreshment under the sheets.… Read the rest

The Gangster,
The Cop,
The Devil
(Akinjeon,
악인전)

Director – Lee Won-Tae – 2019 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

Better the devil you know. A no-nonsense cop and a ruthless gangland boss join forces to catch a serial killer in this South Korean thriller – on BBC Four Sunday, March 7th 22.00 and for one year after

Violent motorist Kang Kyung-ho (Kim Sungkyu) tailgates cars then after he and they have both pulled over stabs their unsuspecting drivers to death. One night, he picks mob boss Jang Dong-su (Ma Dong-seok) who fights back and gets away, inflicting wounds on the killer despite being first stabbed in the back. Meanwhile, his nemesis, cop Jung Tae-suk (Kim Mu-Yeol), is pursuing the same serial killer. Cop and gangster enter into an uneasy alliance to catch the murderer.

As South Korean gangster and crime movies have developed in recent decades, they’ve generally become slicker and, on one level, technically more proficient. Yet on another level, earlier South Korean gangster movies, while rougher around the edges, often have a lot more going on underneath the surface. This one however, while covering everything with the contemporary, superficially fast-paced and slick veneer with lots of impressive car chases and extremely violent one-on-one or group fights, achieves much more interesting dynamics beneath the slick, mass produced veneer.… Read the rest