Brave Citizen
       
                    
Director: Park Jin-pyo
Year: 2023
Rating: 6.0
Country: Korea
A new young female teacher is just beginning at school and wants to please everybody. The teacher is So Si-min (Shin Hye-un) whose only goal is to stay out of trouble, be quiet and get hired full time. She is a cutie-pie with those girly sweet obsequious mannerisms that Korean actresses have a monopoly on in films. She teaches ethics. Which comes into play. The school has won awards for having eliminated bullying. If you have seen many Korean school films, either bullying or ghosts are in most of them. This is bullying. And some of the nastiest you will come across being led by Soo-kang (Lee Jun-young) with a smile so sneering and wicked that he should be the villain in a superhero movie. And he sort of is.



His parents are such big shots that even the teachers are afraid to stop the bullying and the police aren't interested. Some of it is really ugly to watch - uncomfortable - perhaps too much. I know we have lots of sociopaths and psychopaths around, but he and his sniveling entourage of bad seeds seem a bit too much. Think of the bullying assholes in American films and multiply by ten. Si-min is advised by another teacher to just look the other way. You will see things that seem unjust but if you want to keep your job, ignore it. Especially if it is Soo-kang.



And she does. Bites her lip, Clenches her fists. Looks away. But she is an ex-female boxing champion who had to throw away her chances to get into the Olympics for her father. It takes a while, perhaps too long cinematically as we begin to lose patience with her. Come on. Get in on. And she does finally. With a cat mask on. He is tough. No soft privileged rich kid. He can take a punch and give one. And it gets brutal in a near Rocky final bash. Which felt really good to watch. Shin Hye-un is very good in this - from a little sweetie to a warrior. This seems like a far cry from a few of the director's (Park Jin-pyo) earlier efforts - Too Young to Die and You Are My Sunshine - much more commercial but very well done.