We here at the Peach Basket don't get out to the movies too often. We are tragically and hopelessly behind the cinematic times. However, when we do see something of note, and particularly something of note that's being shown in heavy rotation on cable, we need to share that with you. Let the Basket be your guide.
Nowhere to Hide (1999)
Director: Myung-se Lee, Cast: Joong-Hoon Park, Sung-kee Ahn, Dong-Kun Jang, Ji-Woo ChoiI don’t understand Korean films, but I’m finding out I love watching them. I caught this action oddity on TMC or Showtime the other night, about a half an hour into it. And after watching the final 2 acts, I had to go back and watch it from the beginning.
Between
The Host and
Nowhere to Hide, I’m beginning to think that all Korean directors are either schizophrenic or horribly indecisive. It’s as if, when deciding upon what kind of movie to make, they pull three random directors’ names out of a hat and decide to channel them. In this case, Myung-se Lee drew John Woo, Mack Sennett, and Jean-Luc Godard. Ostensibly, an action movie and police procedural, it plays more like a silly and earnest deconstruction of both. The plot is standard fare (cops chase murderer), but the execution involves the most virtuoso gear-shifting this side of Michael Schumacher.
Myung-se Lee fills every scene with genre-bending acrobatics. Fight scenes, while stylish and deliriously chaotic, are also almost pretentiously reflexive. A rooftop brawl morphs into a shadowy waltz. Jump cuts and Impressionist freeze frames accentuate, frustrate, and mock the pugilistic flow.
Exciting music plays over inconsequential and tension-free bridge sequences. Station house beatings and home invasions are played for laughs (as is a footrace between a couple of chubs, in a shot that I fully intend to steal one day).
Joong Hoon-Park delivers his performance as Detective Woo as a cross between Chow Yun-Fat and John Belushi. Woo is as charismatic as violent oafs get (think Shrek crossed with Russell Crowe’s character from
LA Confidential). He is simultaneously neither quite as smart as he thinks nor as dumb as he looks. He does, however, get his ass kicked an awful lot. He leads a merry band of bat, lead pipe and sword-wielding* Keystone Kops in pursuit of a fugitive killer (Sung-kee Ahn, exuding professional menace).
Despite Lee’s genre-bending acrobatics, a palpable urgency is maintained throughout the film. Joong-Hoon Park’s sly genius plays a large part in this. Like the constantly churning conventions of the film around him, his Detective Woo is defiantly unpredictable and compulsively watchable.
I’m not sure if
Nowhere to Hide is an art film for action fans or an action film for the arthouse crowd. It appealed to both viewers inside me, so if you’re a fan of either, queue up the Netflix and embrace the subtitles. It’s also currently in rotation on Showtime. (You can watch the trailer
here, but it doesn't really do the movie justice. The movie's a lot more fun than this lets on.)
*Apparently gun control extends even to police in South Korea. There are only two guns in the whole movie: an actual bullet-firing revolver and another that fires mace. The bullet gun is fired once in the entire film (and causes all kind of pained soul-searching by the shooter) and the mace gun gets fired willy-nilly into the eyes of criminals and their henchman. It wasn’t until my second viewing that I understood the lack of brain-splatter from all those point-blank headshots.
We here at the Peach Basket don't get out to the movies too often. We are tragically and hopelessly behind the cinematic times. However, when we do see something of note, and particularly something of note that's being shown in heavy rotation on cable, we need to share that with you. Let the Basket be your guide.
