The Housemaid - 下女

The Housemaid (下女) is an 2010 film out of Korea. The film stars Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Jung-jae, Seo Woo, and Yoon Yeo-jeong. The movie is a remake of a film with the same storyline from 1960.

Jeon plays Im, a recent hire as an housemaid to a wealthy family. The patriarch, Hoon, is played by Lee and Hae-ra is his wife, played by Seo Woo. The lead housemaid, Byeong-sik, played by Yoon. Im is responsible for lots of things around the house, but her primary responsibility is to take care of Hoon and Har-ra's daugher, Nami, I guessimate to around 9 years old. Hoon takes to her after seeing her a few times in situations that seemed to draw his interest in Im. One night, while Hoon is semi-drunk, he goes to Im's room and they have an affair. All hell breaks loose when Byeong finds out and reveals this to Hae=ra's mother. A snowball effect happens when Im is pregnant. Leading to a very tragic ending.

This movie was a bit hard to watch. The rich play rich and the movies portray them as gods among men. Which might be the cast, I am not rich, I have no reference point other than movies. Maybe I know a absurdly rich person? Most likely not. So, I only have the movies to tell me. Each country presents them in different ways. In this case, its in Korea. Some of the things were not immediately placable in my experience thus, I was lost and didn't understand some things. In other cases, it made perfect sense. With that in mind, I didn't quite get the whole movie.

I saw this film via Amazon Prime a few months ago. I was on and off on it due to time constraints. Thus, I had to remember quite a few times what was going on. Maybe that played into not liking the film much.

New World - 新世界

New World (新世界) is an 2013 film out of Korea. The movie stars Lee Jung-jae, Choi Min-sik, and Hwang Jung-min. Supporting cast include Park Sung-woong and Song Ji-hyo. The movie was release in the states under the Well Go USA label.

Lee plays Ja-sung, the right hand man to Hwang's Jung Chung. They are part of a organized crime syndicate in South Korea. The chairman has recently been killed and a battle for a successor is started between Jung and Park's Lee Joong-gu. Lee's got more muscle than Jung and they're all heading for a vote. The police see this as an opportunity to shape the crime syndicate in their image. Ja-sung is actually a undercover cop. As the movie progresses, you'll notice a lot of other undercovers as well. Choi's section chief Kang and Song's Shin Woo play on the police side and pressure Ja-sung to give up intel on the their boss's. Jung and Lee's side are pitted against each other by Kang. Ja-sung is stuck in the middle trying to get out. How will this all play out?



This movie was really well made. I don't watch a lot of Korean movies anymore as I find the cultural things in those movies hard to follow. In the case here, there's clearly a hierarchy structure that I don't understand. And I don't understand the dynamics of ethnic Chinese in Korea. Which was an important aspect of the movie. I don't know if its the translation into English that loses its meaning, but there is. Sometimes, its the way that they talk that we can't pick up via subtitles. Like if you sarcastically talk back to the police and vice versa. That's why I'll never understand how to give award to films with a foreign language. You lose so much not understanding the language. Even for Hong Kong films translated into Mandarin, there's a degree of "lost in translation" that goes on there.

I do recommend this film due to its slick movie quality. It's unique storyline. And Song Ji-hyo's brief moments in the film.

Typhoon - 颱風

Typhoon (颱風) is a 2005 film out of Korea. The movie stars Jang Dong-gun and Lee Jung-jae. Hailed as a blockbuster back in 2005, but ended up flopping quite badly.

The summary from Netflix is pretty good:

Still seething over the killing of his family as they tried to defect from North to South Korea when he was a child, Sin (Dong-Kun Jang) schemes to nuke all of Korea. Now, naval Lt. Gang Se-jong (Jung-Jae Lee) must track Sin down before he carries out his nefarious plan. But while he can't run the risk of having personal feelings interfere with his mission, as Gang learns more about the man he seeks, he begins to feel sympathy for his plight.

The movie has pretty high production value and goes to quite a few countries. The languages in this film also go for broke. From Korean, English, Chinese, Thai, and Russian. However, the story was very very hard to follow, specifically Sin's story after he gets to Thailand and his rise to power there. The movie is in essence a cat and mouse chase triller. You're never quite sure where it will go. If you're looking for the decadence of the mid-2000s Korean film making, you don't want to skip this one.